


never quite free

by sirfeit



Series: go home, or make a home [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Torture, Torture, Undercover Missions, Yikes, shots fired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:39:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 27,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7352023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I need your help,” he says. Bellamy is good at things like this; pulling people in: he knows how they fit together, how to make them work cooperatively. “I have a tattoo,” he half-explains, not really wanting to get into it.</p><p>“I’m not doing shit for Lexa,” says Bellamy, which, okay. Fair.</p><p>“It’s not for the Commander,” says Murphy. “It’s for Raven.”</p><p>Bellamy wipes sweat off his brow. “Okay,” he says. “I’m listening.”</p><p>--</p><p>"He’s relentless; if he’s on board with you and he’s after what you’re going after, I think he’s a great soldier to have." --Richard Harmon about Murphy</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a median of mercy

**Author's Note:**

> title from the [Mountain Goats song!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVws52PPvEA)

When the Commander had told him in the dust of his last mission, _I will have you trained,_ he’d brushed it over, forgotten about it. 

Of course, the Commander hadn’t.

Her name is Ryfe. The Commander says that she was the _lukotwar_ for Yujleda, the Broadleaf Clan. _Was_ the lukotwar: Murphy was under the impression that it was a permanent position. Either she got out of it okay, or there is no more Broadleaf Clan. Her arms are covered in tattoos: all concentric circles. 

Ryfe is tough. She works him hard, but she doesn’t hurt him - when he fucks up, she’s just disappointed, which. Is whatever. She makes him run laps though, and that fucking sucks. 

He cuts down his fighting with Bryan to once a week. He starts sleeping in Polis again, exhaustion tearing at his bones. 

She starts teaching him Trigedasleng. She says: _language is just different words for concepts of things._ She says: _look, what is this? It’s a thing, not a word._

He says: _how do you say ‘don’t be a bitch’ in Trigedasleng?_

He’s cleaning out stables for a day and a half for that one. It wasn’t worth it. 

—

He struggles through Trigedasleng. He knows very little: _lukotwar_ (spy), _ai laik [name] kom [place]_ (I am [name] from [place]), _breja_ (please), _mochof_ (thank you), _biyo moba_ (I’m sorry), _em_ (an all-purpose pronoun), _frag op_ (kill). He struggles at pulling together sentences, at pronounciation, at understanding. 

He’s doing his best.

—

When he’s not in Polis, he works at the dropship: it’s chillier in the evenings now, but winter hasn’t come as early or as easily as he expected it to. Frequently, Bellamy will ask him to join in a hunting party, or a scavenging mission back to Arkadia, and he accepts easily: Bellamy is a good leader for these kind of little missions, and he’s an excellent distraction. Sometimes, he’ll swap out with Jasper on that; he’s also pretty decent as a sniper. 

Jasper has a death wish, though, and while it doesn’t matter to Murphy if he kills himself, other people would be upset, so. He’ll cover for Jasper.

The missions themselves are good, but after? When they’re sitting around the fire, and Bellamy has this smile tugging at his face, and Harper finally looks relaxed, and Miller and Bryan have their fingers intertwined. And they don’t mind Murphy in their midst. That’s what he keeps coming back for.

This is the life he’s carved out for himself: working to build a place for himself, coming home with his muscles sore and Bellamy to sleep next to. He misses his dead: Emori, Mbege, Fox, Finn, but there are more things to keep him here, in this world, than joining them. He doesn’t dream of their faces any more: they blur together in his mind. 

It hurts, but not in the way he expected it to. And that’s okay.

—

“The Commander is coming to assess your progress today,” Ryfe says. She’s got a kind of obstacle course set up for him by the Polis barracks: mostly high, flat structures he’s been clambering up and jumping off from. The whole thing kind of reminds him of Finn. 

“Okay,” he says. He tries to care about it, but finds he can’t. Some days she’ll only speak to him in Trigedasleng, but she must be too nervous about the Commander to risk his refusal to do anything. 

She has him run drills until the Commander sweeps in. Raven is with her. That’s. New. He knows that Raven sometimes comes to Polis with Clarke, that they’re good friends or whatever, but he didn’t know that Raven had ever spoken to the Commander. That the Commander had any interest in her. 

Anyhow. What a surprise. He doesn’t care.

It is a little startling when he’s crouched on top of one of the structures and Prosper comes in, and Ryfe nods to him. She slants her gaze to Murphy, and, well. He knows what’s expected of him. He’s got his knife.

He gets the jump on Prosper. 

“Kill him,” says Ryfe, so he mimes through the act from behind Prosper; his blade here, just below the heart. A sharp shove upward. “Frag op em,” she repeats, more forcefully: _kill him_.

He drops his knife. “No?” he says, more confused than anything. 

There’s a couple beats of silence. Prosper flips him onto his back, has a knee pressed to his stomach, wraps a hand around his throat. He chokes. Prosper’s eyes say: _Remember when you killed my brother?_ He’s failed Ryfe’s test; Prosper’s going to kill him, here and now. He struggles, half-hearted but helplessly. He is ineffectual either way. 

Prosper lets him go. Moss isn’t dead. He’s fine. He’s fine.

He raises himself up onto his elbow and coughs his lungs out.

He failed. Prosper offers him a hand up. He takes it.

The Commander and Raven are gone.

—

Ryfe looks him over. He looks fine. She says, in a tight voice: “The Commander wants to see you.”

The Commander’s going to execute him. The Commander’s going to say _you aren’t trying hard enough._ The Commander’s going to stop all assistance to the dropship.

Stop. Stop. The Commander is likely to offer him a median of mercy. 

He goes.

—

It’s not just the Commander waiting for him. It’s Raven, too. She’s got her hands in her lap, twisting together. 

The Commander watches him as he enters: her gaze carefully analyzing. She says: “I need you to be _lukotwar_ again.”

No. No. He failed. “No,” he says, and then tries to swallow it. He’d killed six of her students: he still lives. He’s interested in continuing that. “I’m not ready,” he tries to say.

“Not for the Coalition,” she says. “Raven wants to hire you.” Her voice is cool.

That’s. New. “Yeah?” he says, and turns his full attention to her. “Who do you want dead?”

She leans forward, and her voice is iron: “I want to destroy A.L.I.E,” she says.

And. Well. That’s something he can get behind.


	2. we'll match

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the return of Murphy's horse
> 
> sorry this took such a long time to update! hopefully i will return to my normal 3-7day update skedule Soon

Raven has a sheaf’s worth of paper that she lays out all across one of the tables in the meeting rooms. She has maybe two dozen City of Light chips, and she spills them on top of the papers. The Commander picks one of them up, examines it. “Can I keep this?” she asks.

“Sure,” says Raven. “Just don’t swallow it.”

The Commander frowns, and pockets it. 

“So I was thinking that I could hook up the chips to a computer and then look at the code of the City of Light from the outside. To do that, I’ll need a lot of stuff from the Ark — the mainframe that A.L.I.E uploaded herself to, monitors — those are, um, screens — I’ve got a list for you,” Raven is saying. “You’ve been scavenging stuff from Arkadia with Bellamy, though, right? It’ll just be like that."

“Okay,” says Murphy, because agreeing to destroy a computer program and actually making plans to do it are very different things. “I think I should kill Jaha,” he adds. He was there when Jaha entered the City of Light; he’s into making him leave.

“Yeah,” says Raven, like she’s considering it. “No.” 

“It’s a great plan,” says Murphy. “Jaha is also, like, the chancellor of the City of Light. Killing him will destroy the whole thing.” Time and experience and exhaustion have mellowed him, but: here, if he was given the chance. If he was given the command, he would kill Jaha, and he would enjoy it.

“No it won’t,” says Raven, exapserated. “That will just reveal your position too early. Everything that happens to one person in the City of Light, everybody else knows within a minute. And like. Jaha isn’t A.L.I.E. If you cut off his head, he’ll still be in the City of Light. The only thing that will change is that he — Are you even listening?”

He is not listening. Raven will not give him the command to kill; he won’t do it. After, though. After A.L.I.E is destroyed, after — 

He’s had enough of revenge for one lifetime. After. This. He’ll see how things go.

Anyway. Business. He looks to the Commander. She’s turning the chip over and over in her hands again. “Do I still get a tattoo?” he asks her.

“Huh?” she says. She sets the chip down. “Yeah,” she says, gathering something from behind her. “Is your collarbone okay?”

His collarbone is doing just fine, thank you. He is already anxious at the thought of the Commander touching him again, but. That’s not really a problem he’s allowed to have. 

The Commader catches his chin. Thumb to his cheek. Her hands are Emori’s. Nearly. “Here,” she says. “Look,” she says, pulling her hair to one side, showing him the back of her neck. The same infinity symbol/logo as on the chips. “We’ll match,” she says, and she’s trying to make him smile, and that’s kind of weird, to have the Commander after his well-being. So he gives her a twitch of his lips. 

Also. That’s weird, too, that she has the same symbol: is she her own lukotwar? Grounders have tattoos for reasons, right? It’s a puzzle he can’t wrap his brain around, so he just stops caring. 

He hops up on Raven’s table. He takes off his shirt. Raven hisses somewhere behind him. Either she got a papercut or he has some scarring there. Maybe from Titus? Cool.

The Commander swabs something to his collarbone. Keep talking. “Why isn’t Clarke here?” he asks.

“Do you want me to get her?” asks the Commander. 

“No,” he says, and then reframes what he wants to ask. “Why did Clarke do this last time?”

“Oh,” says the Commander, turning her attention back to her tools. “She can draw perfect circles. On the first try.”

Of course she can. He lets his legs dangle. The Commander dips her needle into ink or whatever. She has one hand on his collarbone and the other hand on his shoulder. Whoa. Whoa. This is stupid, he can stay still, he can —

He’s flinching. He’s brought up a hand to shove the Commander away. He’s fine. It’s fine. Raven is swearing. The Commander has removed her hand. 

“Um,” he says. “Sorry,” he says, because that makes people pity you, when you apologize for things you don’t have control over. “Collarbone’s not okay,” he says. Is he even breathing? He should chill out. 

Closes his eyes. Ryfe can talk him down usually. Just pretend she’s here, that she’s not mad at him, that she still cares about him. Breathe. Maybe she still does. He might have failed her test, but he didn’t fail the Commander. She still wants to use him. Ryfe will like that. Ryfe will be proud of him. 

Opens his eyes. The Commander is waiting patiently. Raven is still here. He fucked up in front of Raven. Jesus. 

Ryfe could do it. Ryfe probably knows how, could do it without spooking him too bad. 

Ryfe isn’t here. He can’t ask for Ryfe.

Raven is. Raven will hurt him, but she won’t kiss him. Good. Good alternate plan. 

“Raven can do it,” he hears himself say. “Right here.”

Right under the ribcage. Good place to stab upward. 

Raven regards the Commander. Raven picks up the needle.

Murphy looks away.

 

—

 

 _How long do you need?_ The Commander had asked.

He shrugged. Long enough. 

Raven’s hands were steady. Raven’s hands were steady, even against his breathing. Raven’s hands —

He’s never going to get better. He’s never going to be over it. 

Shoves these thoughts out of his head. Rides back to the dropship with Clarke, his hands around her waist. She says “I’m going back in four days, are you coming?”

Mm. She doesn’t know. “I don’t know,” he says. “I have a. Thing.”

“You have another job?” Clarke asks, surprised. “Already?”

“Don’t pretend like you _care,_ ” he snaps. “I’m not interested in that.”

Clarke’s face closes off. Good. “Fine,” she snaps back, and leaves him to deal with the horse. 

Ugh.

 

—

 

He finds Bellamy chopping wood for the firepit. He watches for awhile, appreciating the view, until Bellamy sets aside the axe and goes, “What do you want?”

“I need a team,” he says, and this is going to be weird, completing a mission and telling other people about it, working with other people, having them _know._ “I need your help,” he says. Bellamy is good at things like this; pulling people in: he knows how they fit together, how to make them work cooperatively. “I have a tattoo,” he half-explains, not really wanting to get into it.

“I’m not doing shit for Lexa,” says Bellamy, which, okay. Fair.

“It’s not for the Commander,” says Murphy. “It’s for Raven.”

Bellamy wipes sweat off his brow. “Okay,” he says. “I’m listening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's weird to still be writing end notes because, like, i don't have any trigedasleng to translate anymore but also, everyone always says "thanks for the always-entertaining end notes" so i feel Obligated
> 
> wow also, think about the Commander being nice to Murphy. seems weird? think about the Commander being nice to prisoners of war, rescuing them and saying "hey, hey, we're at peace now". hot damn i love lexa
> 
> murphy is ace as heck but he can still appreciate the good things in life
> 
> next chapter! return of The Adventure Squad! minus Monty! i feel really bad giving monty a character arc that revolves entirely around him being a love interest but at least he hasn't had to MURDER HIS OWN MOTHER (TWICE). if you're wondering what Monty is up to these days, he's hanging out at the dropship and generally getting shit done, which is pretty good. also, he occasionally spends time with Harper, which is nice. his mom is hanging out with ALIE though which. might come up later. haha. anyway.
> 
> interested in more weird meta like this? you can also follow me on tumblr @icetastrophe! under the tag 'nqf update' i stick meta and general Complaints about Writing. you can also check out my older tag, 'ibg complaining', if you're into that kind of thing.
> 
> as always! your kudos and comments are the raddest things ever. thanks for reading! <3


	3. every good part of him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is so sad and i am so sorry
> 
> also, lots of foreshadowing!!

Every good part of him is good because of Mbege. Mbege is the reason he likes and remembers poetry; he is the reason that Murphy survived lockup. He is the best friend a person could ever hope to have. He was terrible, too, in a lot of ways; neither of them were going to ever get out of there: their crimes were too violent and prison didn’t make them any less volatile. And he died, maybe because of the information that Murphy spilled to the Grounders, and when they went to his grave, the Chancellor couldn’t have cared less about his body. 

They had the same initials. Mbege’s parents would visit him in lockup, and sometimes after those visits, Mbege would talk about some vague future where they both lived and Mbege’s parents were proud of both of them. It was a nice dream. Murphy would crush it every single time, every opportunity he could, and then they would fight, and that was good. And sometimes they would get caught, and each get put in solitary, and that was the worst thing in the world, but most of the time they wouldn’t, and one of them would win and they would lie together on the floor of their cell, and maybe Mbege would pull out a scrap of paper and read a fraction of a poem or a story to Murphy.

Anyhow. He’s thinking about this because Raven’s looking at a screen most of the time, and there’s the date written, and it’s his birthday, and Mbege’s was two days ago. And then Bellamy wants to call a planning meeting, and he’s off-kilter and everything is already _wrong._

—

“We could take someone from the City of Light and —“ Murphy is suggesting, feeling out of his skin and tingly, anxious and out-of-place and wired. This isn’t his gig. He does what he’s told; he’s never been any good at planning. 

“No,” Raven is saying, _again._ “Everything that one person in the City of Light knows, everybody else knows pretty much instantly. You can’t think of the people in the City of Light as individuals, they’re all the same person, and that person is ALIE.” Whatever, whatever, whatever. It all sounds impossible, so he doesn’t believe it.

Bellamy put together a team easily: Miller as his right hand, always, the one he trusts the most. Bryan follows close behind; Harper brings up the rear. In the rafters, Murphy serves as a sniper; Ryfe has taught him to shoot, to see from above. Jasper acts as a distraction; the unreliable wild card: he makes a lot of noise and he has a death wish, so he’s excellent for the job. Raven is on mission support back at the dropship: she has issued each of them a radio. Bellamy wants to make a plan and he wants to go over the plan again and again, and Murphy is sick of it, all of it, and Raven is tense and doesn’t like him and nobody really needs him here, he’s just an annoying distraction.

When they’re caught up into each other’s arguments again, out of focus, Murphy slips out the door. He has a partly-smashed lighter from who knows where tucked into the bottom drawer of his desk; he retrieves it and goes into the forest, sets the grass on fire and stamps it out with his foot, does it again and again, trying to unwind the knot that is his chest. Burns himself a little, maybe accidentally, washes it in the cool water of the running river. Returns back to camp feeling calmer, if not by much.

The heist goes fine. Murphy can see everything well, warns the team when they go too far, the radios work great, Jasper doesn’t do too much stupid shit. 

And. Raven is happy with them. Raven fiddles with her mechanical whatever and she frowns and she has the chips and she’s happy for now. Harper’s face relaxes; she excuses herself early to presumably find Monty. Miller makes some kind of food for them, maybe the chickens he’s been raising haphazardly with Bryan: it’s delicious and Murphy watches him hold hands with his boyfriend, fingers into palms into warmth. He holds his own hand, like he can replicate the experience, but it doesn’t really help. He sits by the fire and tries his best not to look sulky, but hey, his face is just kind of built that way. He stays like that, staring at that orange that can exist only in flame, thoughts drifting and semi-bitter, until Bellamy’s hand comes across his shoulders and says, “Hey, I’m heading to bed, are you with me?” which is good anyway because Harper has returned to the scene and Monty is with her and he’s carrying moonshine, and he tries to avoid both of those things best he can. 

So he follows Bellamy, and he toes off his boots by the door, and he climbs his ladder. And he realizes how tired he is. In his bones, in his skin, in his head. His eyes flutter closed, except —

Except he’s still alive, and he somehow didn’t expect to be, today. A careful review reminds him why he’s so melancholy. He says aloud, “My review would have been today.”

“Huh?” says Bellamy from beneath him.

“I turned eighteen,” he says. And then, considering: “They would have floated me. It was a violent crime, and prison didn’t make me any better, and both my parents are dead.”

“Congratulations,” says Bellamy, but he sounds distracted. He’s probably reading. 

He has to sleep. He has to sleep now, or he risks crying, and he’s not interested in that tonight. Things will be better in the morning, or at the very least, muted. “Can you,” says Murphy, and has to swallow. “Can you read aloud to me,” he says, and still drops out at the end.

Silence. Murphy assumes the answer is _no,_ and is almost asleep anyway, until Bellamy’s honey-warm voice floats up to him.

_There is a moment after you move your eye away_  
_when you forget where you are_  
_because you’ve been living, it seems_  
_somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky._  
_You’ve stopped being here in this world._  
_You’re in a different place,_  
_a place where human life has no meaning._  
_You’re not a creature in body._  
_You exist as the stars exist,_  
_participating in their stillness, their immensity._  
_Then you’re in the world again._  
_at night, on the cold hill,_  
_taking the telescope apart._  
_You realize afterward_  
_not that the image is false_  
_but that the relation is false._  
_You see again how far away  
_ _every thing is from every other thing._

He files that away for use, later, for comfort. The stars; being among them, and then here, on the ground, below them. And his relation to the night sky. And then he really is asleep, and his dreams are fitful, but they are tolerable, and he wakes nobody with them.

 

—

The second heist goes just as well. 

The third time, Raven wants something different. She wants the backpack where A.L.I.E lives, or the mainframe where A.L.I.E uploaded herself. And it might go okay, except — Except things go wrong, because third time’s the charm, after all. 

Jasper has some kind of unexplained crisis, and there’s a lot of noise, and Murphy doesn’t _care,_ he can barely pretend to care when he’s required to, except then Raven announces that Jasper will be running mission support with her, and Monty will be replacing Jasper as a distraction. And then there’s a hushed, frantic conversation that Miller has with Bellamy, and Bellamy asks him if he’ll swap with Monty; Murphy as a distraction with Monty sniping from above.

Which, okay, sure. Whatever. One of them is a trained professional and one is not, but whatever. He does what he’s told. 

So he draws them out, away from the room Raven indicated; A.L.I.E’s soldiers: they move, inexplicably, as one mass: except for Jaha — and. He _wants._ He remembers his father in the airlock, begging for his life, and Jaha’s impassable face. 

Raven won’t give him the command. He won’t do it. Not now.

He does his best to confuse the herd, buys them time. There’s a crackle over the radio, Bellamy is counting off and asking each of them to check in safely. It means that he’s got the backpack. 

They’re surrounding him now. He’s not going to get out. He realizes this all at once: he hasn’t bargained for how they move as one cohesive unit, with Jaha as their wild card. He’s fucked up, and he can blame Monty all he likes, but the blame falls on him, on his bloodthirst, on his shortsightedness. He takes a deep breath.

They can’t kill him. They can’t kill him, because they want him to take the chip, and he has to consent to that. He is functionally safe. He is safe.

“Murphy?” Bellamy is saying, like an afterthought. “You good?”

“Do you have it?” Murphy asks, although he’s not supposed to: they always talk in code over the radio. 

“Yeah,” says Bellamy, and his voice is all relief. “Yeah, we got it. You good?”

“I’ll be good. I'll be there soon,” he says. “I just need a little more time.”

“Great,” says Bellamy. “I’ll see you back at camp.”

And then Murphy goes for his gun, and it’s gone. He can still feel his knife in the bottom of his boot, but that doesn’t do him much good anymore.

Jaha says: “ _Take a leap of faith with me, John,_ ” and there’s hands at his shoulders and his arms, and someone’s holding out a chip to him. And he looks Jaha straight in the eye and he spits in the Chancellor’s face.

They start hitting him, then: and; _You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning._

And he repeats that, in his head, over and over, and then out loud, until he’s screaming it, and then he can’t do much more of anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are so many colons and semi-colons in this? i am so sorry?
> 
> you: but lat it’s the 22nd century how does that lighter still have lighter fluid  
> answer: it’s a solar-powered lighter don’t talk to me
> 
> jasper is kind of a plot device and i feel bad but also. he is having a Time. murphy doesn’t care because he is also having a Time
> 
> poem is ‘telescope’ by Louise Gluck
> 
> haha okay enjoy that cliffhanger for another week. on the plus side, in the next chapter is emori!!
> 
> hey! if you read the unedited version of this in the sixteen hours it was up on Monday, i am very sorry! it’s better now
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos mean the world to me. i <3 them, and i <3 you. thanx


	4. careful now, john

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy misses his socks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i ate dehydrated strawberries for research for this  
> it cost me $4
> 
> eternal thanks to the_warm_beige_color for all her help on this chapter

He returns to consciousness and almost immediately wishes he hadn’t. First of all, the headache. Also, like, the pain in general. 

Ugh. His shirt and socks are gone. It’s cold. 

He’s cuffed to one of the support railings. Rattles that. Ow. He can’t stand up, but it’s not like he’s really interested in doing that. 

It’s really bright. It’s very cold. It’s like being in the skybox all over again, except it isn’t the cold of space, it’s coming in through one of the vents. It’s weird that this room is kept so cold when it’s so chilly outside.

Whatever.

Whatever there is, whatever they have planned for him, he just has to endure it until they destroy the backpack. Which will be soon. Raven’s good at what she does. She’s the best.

He’s too cold to sleep, and the headache makes it impossible anyway, so he stares and stares at the cell wall across from him. And he waits.

 

—

 

It’s been an hour. It’s been an hour and a half. It’s been two, three, four hours.

Mofi is insubordinate and stubborn, but for the most part, he is not stupid. He always shows up for training. If he doesn’t show up for training, she will find him somewhere in Polis: asleep in his upstairs room, with Prosper in the mess hall, once, in the stables, crying about a beautiful and very old black horse. 

He is not in Polis. But she knows where he lives, in broad strokes at least, and she rides for the dropship. 

She finds Raven sitting at a firepit, along with a host of other children. Mofi is not among them. Raven looks up at her, and says: “Ryfe,” kind of surprised. Ryfe is surprised herself, that Raven even knows her name.  

“Hello,” says Ryfe, the pleasantry strange on her tongue. “Do you know where Mofi is?”

Another child looks up and says bitterly, “Murphy hopped off.”

“What?” says Ryfe.

Raven clarifies. “He means that Murphy left,” she says. “He got us the backpack, and then he figured that he was done, so he left. He’s done it before.”

That doesn’t — make any sense. “Show me.”

Raven takes her there.

 

—

 

They take him out twice a day to piss and to work out the kinks in his arms. The second time, before they cuff him, he’s sprayed with a cold blast of water and while he stands there, barefoot and shivering and dripping, he says “Are you going to torture me or what?” because _come on_ , get on with it.

“There is no pain in the City of Light,” says his guard. Then, without prompting: “When you were a kid, your favorite food was strawberries,” he says. “Not the bright, fresh ones grown from Farm Station, but the dehydrated ones brought up from the original astronauts from Earth.”

“Um,” says Murphy.

“After your father was killed, your mother spent some of her saved ration credits on strawberries for you. But that was the last time she did anything like that.”

He remembers the crunch of them over his tongue; the way his saliva coaxed out the sweetness. 

His guard holds out a clear hexagon to him. “You can see her again in the City of Light,” he says.

“You’re going to have to try way harder than that,” he says, and then he’s choking back laughter and then his breath, as he’s hit in the stomach, and yeah, he goes down pretty much instantly, onto his hands and knees, and he’s still kind of laughing in that weird mix of laughter/crying/breathing, and when he gets cuffed again and led back to his cold, bright cell, that’s fine. 

 

—

 

The backpack is sitting on Raven’s desk in the main engineering room. It’s hooked up to her monitors, and she can see the whole of the City of Light through code; line after line after line of programming. She’s not _great_ at scripting, but she remembers enough about the City to navigate her way around.

Unfortunately, that’s about all she can do. There isn’t really enough processing power in the monitors to allow her to edit the code. Ryfe sits down, watches her boot up the City and then mess around in it. Monty has followed them, and with him, Harper; eventually, the rest of their recon team filters in; Bellamy, Bryan, Miller, even Jasper. Raven doesn’t miss the way Bryan cuts a nod to Ryfe, the way she nods back, respect shared over a glance. Ryfe looks to the screens. “Mofi thinks that his job is done, so he’s left? But your City of Light is still here?”

“Yeah,” says Raven, unsure what she’s getting at.

“What was the last thing he said to you?”

“I’ll be good, I’ll be there soon, I’ll see you back at camp,” rumbles Bellamy.

Ryfe shakes her head. “You routinely receive food and supplies from Polis,” she says. “Where do you think that’s coming from?”

Monty shrugs. “It’s Clarke, right?”

She nods to Bellamy: “You know,” she says.

Bellamy blinks at her. “I don’t?”

Ryfe scowls. “Mofi is — _employed_ — by Polis. One of his conditions of his continued employment was for this encampment to receive deliveries from Polis. Further, if he does not complete his mission within the required amount of time, you or I will be asked to kill him.”

“What?” says Raven. She can feel the hairs stand up all along her arms. Ryfe starts repeating herself. “No, I just —“ _I just. Didn’t realize. I didn’t know._

Ryfe is looking past her now, to the screens. “Is something happening?” she asks.

Raven looks back to them. Static, all across her vision. She blinks. It retreats to the edges, just in her peripheral line of sight. The City of Light is on the move. “They’re coming here,” she says. “They’re — A.L.I.E is coming here.”

Ryfe stands up. “You should talk to Lincoln kom Trikru,” she says.  “You’re gonna need some fucking sanctuary.”

 

—

 

Later, Dr. Griffin comes to visit him. He sits up when she comes in, looks her over. He doesn’t trust her, but he also _knows_ that like, she’s okay. 

“You’d never take the key,” he says. “How did you get here?”

Her eyes are bright. She looks more like Clarke does, if Clarke looked younger. “Thelonius showed me the way,” she says.

“Jesus _Christ_ , _”_ he says. 

Her mouth pulls down. “I’m sorry for the way you’ve been treated,” she says. “We are just very excited for you to come to the City; the knowledge you could share with us, and your potential.”

Wow, gross. He turns his head to the side, refuses to talk to her.

She leaves a package of dehydrated strawberries in the corner of his cell when she leaves, and he gets it, okay, he understands that he is cuffed to a wall and he hasn’t eaten and when he was like _eight,_ strawberries were his Thing, so whatever, he could take the key and be a weird emotionless soldier and also not remember anything that ever happened to him, and it’s almost, _almost_ tempting but also. Also. There is a corporate logo stitched into the skin above his ribcage, coupled with the Commander and Raven’s trust in him. There is what the City of Light will take away: his pain and his penance and his birthright; his self-hatred and his redemption. 

It’s tempting. He is weak. But he won’t.

Or so he keeps telling himself.

 

—

 

Lincoln directs most of the camp to a peninsula near the sea. He’s got this wistful little smile and he says, “It will be good for you to visit the ocean,” and then, “Floukru will take care of you.” He looks over Raven and her carrying a bundle of cords, and he has a quick conversation with Octavia in Trigedasleng. 

Octavia looks to Raven, and Raven feels her cheeks warm. “You need to go underground,” she says, and then there’s a flurry of activity: their recon team loads into the back of Rover One, and Raven packs a host of electronics into Rover Two. Prosper, Moss, Ryfe, Lincoln and Octavia join her; there’s a pause, and then Indra climbs into the driver’s seat. 

Raven plugs a hard drive into the [AUX jack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j47lkX6WtHA), and everyone startles except Octavia, who nods back at her.

And she doesn’t think of Murphy again until they arrive.

 

—

 

They take him out of his cell one last time. He is led to a different blank room somewhere in the Ark.

There are a lot of A.L.I.E’s people here. Eight, maybe. Dr. Griffin is here. 

They back him into the wall, and Dr. Griffin says, “Careful now, John _,_ ” and like, Jaha couldn’t even bother to _show up_ , and he clenches his jaw shut. Someone pinches his nose, and there’s another hand at his throat — He pulls back his lips in some parody of a smile, breathes through his teeth.

Raven is working on it. Raven is working on destroying the whole City of Light, right now. Maybe it’s already dead, and it just hasn’t caught up to him yet.

 _You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity,_ and there’s fingers at the hinge of his jaw, _pressing_ — The pain is enough to get him to open his mouth.

The pill is on his tongue, and then his jaw is forced closed, another wide hand over his mouth. Christ —

His head is tipped back. A strip of tape is applied to his lips - can’t move - his nose pinched shut again.

“You need to swallow, John,” says Dr. Griffin, which, really sound medical advice there! It’s fine! 

They won’t let him breathe until he swallows, and he can’t fake it, because they’ll _know_ when he enters the City. He thrashes, and they don’t let up and maybe it would be better to be dead! 

He closes his eyes. He swallows. 

He takes a deep breath, and he smells rain and gasoline.

He opens his eyes to grey and skyscrapers. 

He’s going to fucking kill A.L.I.E.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know who's in the next chapter?? EMORI  
> i love emori
> 
> shoutout to murphy who has spent the better part of a year learning how to fight and still is not that great at it, and also to bellamy who is Useless
> 
> as always. your kudos and comments mean the world to me. also i'm sorry about the cliffhanger but also emori is in the next chapter so! consolations?


	5. she's real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i love emori

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has Flashbacks in it (and the narrative-structure type, not the PTSD kind)! i really don’t like reading flashbacks entirely in italics, so I will not do that to you. instead, the beginning of a flashback scene has asterisks above it instead of my usual —. 
> 
> otp: murphy/freedom

It’s raining in the City of Light, which seems a little strange to him until he feels the water on his skin, soaking him through, and he remembers how much he likes rain. He’s holding something in his left hand: somehow, he knows to press a button on its handle, and it shoots out above him. He raises it above his head.

It’s like a portable roof to protect him from the rain. Neat.

In his other hand, he’s holding a paper cup. He can feel the warmth through the paper, but there’s a lid on the cup, so he can’t tell what’s inside. He raises the cup to his lips and drinks from it anyway.

Hot cocoa.

It burns going down his throat, like maybe he’s sad? But he isn’t sad, he’s just. It was warm. 

He takes another sip. It’s good. He likes it.

_He’s going to fucking kill A.L.I.E._

Nah. What he’s going to do, right now, is get out of the rain. He’s standing on a street, and there are people bustling past, and they’re good people, and they’re friendly but not too friendly. And that’s okay.

He ducks underneath the awning of one of the buildings, and sheathes his portable roof. It’s a business building. A cafe, like the ones outside Polis, kind of. Maybe he could get some more hot cocoa. 

 _Then you’re in the world again._ His throat feels warm, even though he hasn’t drunk any more. He doesn’t want to go in there. He goes back out on the street with his portable roof, keeps walking.

***

It had started out with questions about Clarke. He was tied to a chair in that weird church-dungeon; his hands in front of him, his legs tied to the base. He had spent most of his time unconscious, and the rest of it being questioned. Answering, or for the most part, screaming. 

And then: Titus asks him about the City of Light, and he doesn’t have anything to tell him, and Titus discovers that he hates being choked, and they grow to know each other better, in the worst possible ways. That’s the afternoon he escapes: Titus is gone longer than usual and he pulls into consciousness long enough to bite the ropes above and off his wrists. The door is locked, but — He pulls the metal pole out from the space shuttle to fight with — space shuttle? POLIS. POLARIS. That’s. Interesting.

And then Titus finds him, and they fight, and it goes poorly for Murphy, obviously and Titus’ knee is at his throat and — 

He begs as best he knows how. “No, no, no - hey. If I tell you what you wanna know about the chip, okay, please, you know it has something to do with Polaris, right, and the space station it came down from, right, I can show you, please, please, I can show you —“

Titus presses down until he’s certain that this is it, the end forever, and then he lets Murphy up. He’s on his hands again, and then standing, coughing. Everything hurts. He points to the space shuttle; here, look at it. “I’m guessing you think that it’s Polis, because the A and the R, they burned off during re-entry. You see?” Titus is impassive. “Okay, you see that?”

Titus says: “All I see is a man who would say anything not to die.”

Okay. Fair. “That may be true,” he agrees. “But so is this: Polaris? That’s part of our story, too. It was our thirteenth station.”

“My faith has got _nothing_ to do with yours,” snarls Titus.

Ha. Faith. “Trust me, I have no faith,” he snaps back, and, steady now, Murphy. “But look. I can prove it to you.” He gets the torch off the wall, uses it to point to the drawings on the wall. “The end of the world. The mushroom cloud. That’s why we had to stay in space. You guys call us Skaikru, right? That’s why. Polaris, as the story goes, is the only station that wouldn’t join Skaikru. So they blew it up.”

Titus nods. “That’s a novel concept,” he says. “Continue.”

And he’s caught up in the story now, and: “Anyhow, I’m thinking that this person. She somehow got out in time, right okay? Because look, here she is again. She’s there, surrounded by all those, I don’t really know what those are.”

“The first natblida.”

Right, whatever that is. “Natblidas. There she is. This woman, fell out of the sky, right?” And he’s staring at the wall, and he’s hardly paying attention to Titus, but what did he think would happen, anyway? “Just like us.”

And Titus says: “We are _nothing_ like you,” and he’s hit over the head with something, and everything goes blurry and painful, and then, mercifully, dark.

—

Eventually he gets to the end of the street, and he turns right. Here, there are less skyscrapers; more buildings are houses. He walks up to one that feels familiar. It’s sunny now, so he puts away his portable roof. Actually, he just drops it, and it disappears, and it’s not his problem. 

He knocks on the door. There’s a couple seconds, and there’s uncertainty in his heart, and then Emori answers.

Emori.

“John,” she says, and then, “I’m sorry,” and it doesn’t matter what she’s sorry for, because she’s _here_ and she’s not dead and he crosses the threshold to her, and his arms are around her and she’s real and she’s real and she’s _real_ —

_You’re not a creature in body_

“Emori,” he says, and that’s all he needs to say, but he keeps going anyway: “Emori, where are you?”

“I’m right here, John,” is what she says, and. That’s not the answer he was looking for. He lets his hands drop, really looks at her. He picks up her hand, both hands, holds them together. 

“Something’s wrong with you,” he says, but he can’t really pick out _what_ , exactly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she says, and then she says, “I was a stain on the bloodline,” flat, like she —

_Not that the image is false, but that the relation is false._

Like she believes it. 

He looks at his own hands. They’re the same that they’ve always been. Are they? He can’t remember anymore. 

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, tries to remember what he came here for. 

***

That time, he had been sure that he was dead. But he wakes up again, against all odds, against all expectations. He is in a cage, like — Not like when he was with the Grounders, that first time. That cage was made of wood, and this one is all metal, except — There’s a blanket, folded up at the bottom, so that his knees aren’t on bare metal. 

It’s big enough to let him kneel with his hands folded in his lap. It’s just wide enough so that he can sit cross-legged. He can lay down as long as he curls all the way around the bars.

_The only thing that matters / is not putting me in a cage._

In the future, Titus will take him out of the cage, show him drawings of the Spirit of the Commander, try to explain to him how the Flame chooses, how the Flame passes down the wisdom from all past Commanders, how the City of Light chip is an affront to his whole thing or whatever.

And he hurts Murphy: knives and burns and bruises, and every time, he gets shoved back in the cage. That’s mostly what he remembers about Titus, but A.L.I.E wants to know about the things that Titus told him, so he does his best. Replays the whole thing over and over again for her, until finally the memory is gone.

Good. He doesn’t have any particular fondness for that one.

—

As per Lincoln’s directions, they drive towards the ocean, following old trade routes until they get to a shoddy, small cabin. Lincoln gets out of the Rover and knocks on the door, Octavia tucked in beside him. A woman answers the door; Lincoln looks a little startled, but then he laughs and nods, and he gestures for the rest of them to get out of the car and come inside.

Raven takes her screens and shrugs the backpack over her shoulders. The woman brings them into the cabin, and then down a flight of stairs, into a cave passageway. The woman touches the wall, and the whole hallway lights up. Her face is all odd angles and black ink, across her forehead, the bridge of her nose, her cheek; “Please,” she says, half-turning. “Call me Luna.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #breakneck  
> this was more of a transition chapter than i wanted, so next week Some More Stuff will happen, including, like, Bellamy being a character again
> 
> and by 'next week' i mean a time anywhere from 'later today' to 'next friday'
> 
> for future generations, i would like to forever commemorate blueparacosm & nicoleanell, my most faithful commenters. 10/10. a Good Bunch. thank you.
> 
> #There Are No Umbrellas In Space  
> #In Space, Nobody Knows You Want Ice Cream, Because Nobody Can Hear You Scream [the_warm_beige_color, 2016]


	6. yee-ouch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so unhappy with this chapter but also i am so done with it so take this

They pile into the Rover by noon. Raven has said that Arkadia is running on a skeleton crew: most of A.L.I.E’s people have gone to the capital, to Polis, for some reason, and now would be a great opportunity to go over and smash everything and collect what they can. Clarke has gone ahead to warn Lexa and her crowd.

Raven stays behind with Octavia and Lincoln: Prosper and Moss have gone into the woods with Ryfe and Luna, maybe to gather supplies, maybe to avoid the rest of them. She’s wired the radios so that they work long-distance, so she’s running mission support from the cave system. It’s going pretty well.

—

They’re coming over the hill. Monty is talking to Harper about whatever he was working on before they fled to the ocean’s shores: he’s hoping to pick up the remainder of it when they pass through the dropship’s camp on their way to Arkadia.

They’re over the crest of the hill now. The grass underneath the Rover is ash. 

It — hadn’t looked like much in the first place, but it was theirs, and they built it, and they were proud of it. Now it’s gone.

“ _Christ,_ ” says Harper.

They don’t dwell on it. They keep driving.

—

_< They’re coming. I can see them over the hill. You need to leave now.>_

He’s never been happier in his life. There’s the sun, and the sky, and he is warm and Emori’s hand is twined within his. He doesn’t want to leave. 

 _< Murphy. Go._>

Emori is smiling. He wants to go to her house, maybe —

A bolt of pain shoots up his arm. He opens his eyes.

There are footsteps in the corridor. 

He’s sitting on the floor of his cell in Arkadia. One hand is cuffed to the wall. He’s wearing his shirt again. No word on where his socks went.

It’s weird, having a body. To _feel_ things, with nerve endings. It’s weird, even, to feel pain, but he thinks that at one time, he was used to it. And — that memory is gone, too. Kind of strange, to feel out all these holes in his brain — but he’s glad for them. He’s better off without them.

Somebody swears outside in the hallway. There’s a _thud,_ and then the door bursts open.

Bellamy.

—

He did not expect to find Murphy here, in Arkadia, in this room.

Murphy glances at Bellamy, visibly swallows, and then starts coughing. 

Bellamy slowly realizes that he never expected to see Murphy again. He drops to his knees, to be eye-level with him, keeping his hands visible. Murphy coughs a couple more times, regards him with more curiousity than caution. 

Bellamy reaches a hand out, touches the skin at the hollow of Murphy’s throat. Murphy’s eyes lock to his, but he doesn’t flinch. It’s like touching a wild deer, except his own caution feels like it’s unwarranted. 

“Huh,” says Miller behind him. Bellamy startles bad enough to drop his hand. Murphy isn’t wearing socks or boots and he’s cuffed to the wall. They must have tortured him before they abandoned him here, although he doesn’t really look worse for the wear.

“They told me the dropship burned,” says Murphy. His voice sounds hoarse with disuse. “Is that true? Are you okay? Is everyone okay?”

Behind him, Miller almost starts speaking, and acting on impulse, Bellamy cuts him off. “No,” he says. “Everything is fine. We came back for you.”

“Thanks,” says Murphy, but he doesn’t sound convinced. 

It’s a simple task to free Murphy from the wall: all Ark cuffs have the same locks, because resources were limited. Murphy pulls his wrist away from the wall, rubs it, hisses. He goes to stand, can’t make it, leans on the wall and finally sits back down. “Shit,” he mutters, and cradles his head in his uninjured hand.

Bellamy sets a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “When was the last time you ate?” he asks.

There’s a long pause before Murphy finally says: “I don’t know.”

Bellamy doesn’t even glance backwards. “Miller, can you —“

“Yeah,” says Miller from behind him, and he’s gone.

“I don’t even know what day it is,” says Murphy into his hand. 

“Hey,” says Bellamy. “It’s okay, shh,” but Murphy doesn’t seem to need his usual type of reassurances, so they both crouch in silence until Miller returns with protein packs and what looks like an oatmeal cookie.

Murphy opens the oatmeal cookie with steady hands. He bites into it, chews, frowns, and takes another bite. 

“What’s wrong?” asks Bellamy.

“This doesn’t taste like anything,” says Murphy, obviously perturbed. 

Bellamy shares a significant look with Miller. Miller nods. 

“The dropship is really okay?” Murphy asks again.

“Yeah,” lies Bellamy. “The dropship is fine.”

Harper is leaning on the doorframe. “Hey,” she says. “I found the mainframe, let’s go smash it, yeah?” There’s a pause, and then. “Hey, Murphy.”

Murphy graces her with a nod. “Hey,” he says.

“I thought you were dead,” she tells him.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he replies, but he sounds sincere rather than dry. “You’re gonna smash something?”

“Yeah,” says Harper. “You coming or what?”

Murphy glances to Bellamy, like he’s asking for permission. Bellamy crouches next to him, and Murphy wraps an arm around his shoulders and neck. They stand slowly, together, with Bellamy holding the majority of Murphy’s weight. “You good?” asks Bellamy.

“Yeah,” says Murphy, and they follow Harper further into Arkadia.

—

Harper is on the radio with Raven. “So, like, which things am I actually smashing?” she’s asking, holding a very large hammer in one hand, her radio in the other.

“Everything,” suggests Raven. “Anything that looks or seems mechanical, or like it could be mechanical, and anything that looks smashable.”

“Cool,” says Harper, and picks up the hammer to bring it down on the nearest monitor. Over the headset, Raven screams: Murphy’s fingers tighten around Bellamy’s shoulders, digging into his skin. 

Harper stops almost immediately, and Raven recovers enough breath to say, “Hang on,” over the radio. There’s a muffled sound in the background, and Raven calls out somewhere behind her, “Hey Octavia!”

Octavia now, in that same faraway tone: “Yeah?”

“Can I borrow you for a second?”

Octavia has come around to sit beside Raven: they can hear a chair scooching up nearer to the microphone. “Yeah, what do you need?”

“Give me your hand,” Raven says. To them: “Okay, keep going, Harper.”

Harper obligingly continues. Distinctly, they can hear Octavia over the radio, a hundred miles away, go: “Yee-ouch.” Harper snickers.

Murphy’s fingers are tight on Bellamy’s neck. They get worse until Bellamy almost says something, but then the pressure abates abruptly, and Murphy’s hand is gone. He’s standing on his own weight now, and Bellamy watches him bend his knees slightly, going for the gun in Bellamy’s waistband. He is too slow to stop him, too slow to react: as Harper pulls back again, Murphy aims and pulls the trigger, catching Harper in the shoulder, and then again, in the leg.

Harper goes down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every time it's 'they' i mean 'the whole adventure squad' for the most part, which is harper/jasper/miller/bryan/bellamy/[murphy]
> 
> as always: your kudos and comments mean the world to me. thank you infinitely


	7. i can't believe you had sex with raven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> harper might be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay friends this chapter is pretty scary but also! there are some funny bits. i hope you enjoy

Bellamy kicks Murphy’s legs out from underneath him: Murphy drops the gun, goes down hard onto his hands and knees, stays there. Bellamy is dimly aware of Harper gasping, Raven asking for clarification, Monty speaking very quickly. Miller kicks the gun away from both of them, presses a hand to Murphy until he collapses, a knee into the small of his back. 

“We need to get her to Medical,” Monty is saying, and Bryan is nodding — together, they somehow produce a stretcher, load Harper onto it. There’s — there’s a lot of blood. “If that’s her femoral artery —"

Murphy is muttering something into the floor. Bellamy threads a hand into his hair, wrenches his head upwards. “What the fuck are you saying.”

“It’s not her femoral artery,” he says, through a mouthful of blood. Bellamy doesn’t remember hitting him. “I’m not a fucking _amateur,_ let me up, I can fix this, I can fix her —“

“ _What are you talking about,_ ” says Bellamy, confused and exhausted and useless. “You _shot_ her —“

“Dr. Griffin is in the City of Light with me — Raven can —“

Miller has scrabbled away to get the discarded radio: he summarizes events as quickly as possible. 

“I mean, yeah, theoretically, that should work — I wouldn’t trust him, though,” Raven is saying over the radio. “How’d Abby get into the City, Murph?”

Murphy says something into the floor. Bellamy yanks him up to his knees, and he repeats himself: “Jackson,” he says. “But only because you weren’t available.”

Bellamy cuffs Murphy’s good hand to his own. 

“I can’t believe you had sex with Raven,” Murphy tells him, and then Bellamy does hit him, and Murphy spits blood, and he laughs.

—

Harper is still conscious. That’s a good sign. She has lost a lot of blood, though, which is bad. On the plus side, they all share the same blood type, and there’s plenty of them here.

He remembers another time, digging bullets out of Arkadians and Grounders alike after the bomb dropped on Tondc, Jackson beside him, always by his side, his shadow since Jackson was just a kid — These aren’t his memories.

Monty has elevated Harper’s feet, her head. Murphy starts directing him, to do what he can’t do with one hand, except Monty starts yelling at him. Murphy stops talking, does his best to employ Active Listening, but he just zones out. He’s trying to help, and if Monty can’t see that, that’s okay. There’s a moment where everyone is yelling over each other, and then Bryan says underneath the noise: “Murphy. What do you want me to do?” and Murphy instructs him. It’s not like he’s talking to Dr. Griffin so much as he just _knows_ what she would say, how she would react. 

He gets hold of a blood transfusion thing, but he can’t seem to grip onto it right: there’s something wrong with the way his free hand works, like his movements are too slow or like his wrist doesn’t work correctly. 

“Stop,” says Bellamy. “You can’t use that hand,” he says, taking the thing from him. “You’re injured,” he explains, when Murphy keeps staring at him.

“It doesn’t hurt,” says Murphy, reaching out for it.

“Shut up,” says Bellamy roughly, and presses the needle of it into his shoulder. The machine beeps, and Bellamy says: “You’re anemic, can I override that?”

“Yeah,” he says, and then reconsiders. “But you shouldn’t. It won’t help Harper, and your blood is fine. Give it back,” he says, reaching for it.

“You can’t hold anything,” argues Bellamy.

“I’ll do it,” says Monty beside them, his voice even. “Give her my blood.” 

And then it goes smoothly again: Bryan makes the transfer, digs out the bullets with a pair of tweezers. Easy, easy, easy. And then: “Okay,” says Bryan. “What do you want to do now?”

“We still need to smash the mainframe,” Miller is saying. He’s cuffed to Bellamy, but all he needs to do is break his thumb and he can slip out, and he can take Miller’s gun —

“Stop,” says Bellamy in his ear, and he stills. “Bryan, Monty, get Harper into the Rover. Miller, if you want to smash it, go ahead.” Murphy makes an involuntary noise, yanks at the cuff until Bellamy wraps a hand around his shoulders. 

Miller shrugs, but he also takes the sledgehammer and leaves.

Over the radio, Bellamy says to Raven: “So Murphy’s in the City of Light, what do you want to do?”

“Bring him back here,” she says. “But you can’t — you can’t let him know where we are, or where we’re going, or we’ll have A.L.I.E on our doorstep.”

And he wants to ask, he wants to _know:_ but then the pain blossoms up in his chest, and it’s all he can do to stay standing. 

—

Murphy’s head drops to his chest at the same time there’s a cut-off yell from Raven over the radio, and he starts speaking again. Bellamy has to bend his knees a little and tilt his head to hear, for the words to make sense: “…when you forget where you are, because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky…”

Weird. 

Bellamy takes him out to the Rover. Jasper is there, listening to the music player he has. He takes one earbud out, looks up at them curiously.

Murphy stops behind the Rover, won’t get into the back, even as Bellamy tugs on the cuff still connecting them together. He’s stopped talking by now, looks up at Bellamy with wide eyes. Bellamy scowls, lifts him by the armpits into the Rover and then sets him on one of the seats, then reaches over, unlocks the cuff from his own wrist, threads it through the back of the Rover’s seat and locks it around Murphy’s injured wrist. Murphy gasps, makes a low, distressed noise. 

Bellamy looks him over. “You can’t feel pain,” he says, rough.

Murphy’s expression shutters closed, and when he looks up at Bellamy again, he smirks. “There is no pain in the City of Light.”

Bellamy takes a strip of cloth from his bag and ties it around Murphy’s eyes, trying his best to ignore the guilt that has pooled in his chest. 

—

Jasper slides in to sit next to Murphy, examines him for several tense seconds, and then shoves both earbuds into Murphy’s ears. Murphy startles and turns his head suddenly, trying to twist out the earbuds: Jasper raises both hands and holds Murphy’s head steady, until he settles. Against Murphy’s ear: “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere, you get me?”

Murphy takes a deep breath. “ _Don’t,_ ” he says, with some unknown urgency behind it.

Jasper wraps an arm around Murphy’s shoulders. Bellamy goes to meet Miller, to help carry Harper. He tries to match his breathing to Murphy’s. 

A measure of time passes. “The drone,” Murphy says, barely audible, into the silence. “You have to shoot down the drone. It’s following us.”

They’re not moving. Jasper shifts his eyes to the Rover’s window. There’s a flying machine hovering outside: a drone, collecting information, whirring.

They haven’t seen fit to leave him a gun. He can’t afford to wait for anyone to come back. 

He takes his arm away from Murphy, moving slowly. 

There’s a thick rubber band wrapped around the gearshift of the Rover. There’s a rock that fits perfectly in his palm. He opens the Rover’s skylight, sticks his head out. The drone flies above him, clicking, processing.

He knocks it out of the sky on the first try, and then hops out the back ofthe vehicle, walks over, and smashes the rest of it beneath his boots. When he gets back to the Rover, Murphy is leaning over, spitting blood.

Jasper rubs his back and pretends he doesn’t notice when Murphy’s shoulders shake into crying, or laughter.

When the others return, they blame Jasper for the blood on the floor. It’s not his problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to jasper
> 
> also shoutout to murphy somebody transfer some blood to him
> 
> this chapter brought to you by jay brannan’s album ‘goddamned’ (and his ep ‘in living cover’)
> 
> raven was keeping that rubber band on the gearshift for emergencies. and it came in handy! good job raven
> 
> um also i want you to be reassured that murphy is not bleeding internally. 
> 
> coming up next! Grounders return, Ryfe!!!, Luna?! aaaand some other stuff probably. and probably clarke if she fits in!
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos mean the world to me. i am a very small creature and i require your validation to fuel my future writing prospects. also, they make me smile. <3


	8. i was born in space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is one part angst and one part good things happening to murphy

There is a guard on Mofi at all times, but: here is the truth: at the best of times, the Skyrats are barely competent; worn to the bone and anxious and trusting her, they are useless. He is kept in the room adjacent to Raven’s, and that night, when his guard falls asleep and Raven is awake but listening to music directly in her eardrums (which can’t possibly be good for her) and focused on whatever she does on her screens, she slips in unannounced, perfectly silent.

Mofi is awake, if barely: his head drops to his chest every so often, and then perks back up whenever he thinks he hears a noise. He is still blindfolded, his arms cuffed behind him, leaning up against the far wall of the cave. Bryan had made some assorted protests about circulation, and Belomi had agreed reluctantly to let him loose every four hours or so; Raven has an alarm on her screen. Ryfe estimates she has another forty minutes until she will encounter an interruption.

She crouches to him in the dark. “Hey, Mofi,” she says, low and gentle. “You failed your mission. Do you understand what will happen to you?” 

He is unresponsive. His feet are bare. His toes are going to get cold. He is going to die. 

They have talked about this, of course. What would happen: he is an asset of the Coalition, useful only so long as he is successful. If he betrays the Commander’s trust again, if he wavers in his loyalty, if he gives his secrets to the enemy — He stared at her, a little wild-eyed. _Don’t worry,_ she had said. _If it comes to that, I will make your death painless — that is something you deserve._ And then he had laughed, bitter and repulsive, and she had wrapped his hand into her own hand: a comfort, a betrayal. She can apologize, but this is the contract they have both paid for with their blood. She will not apologize. _You were born for this, Mofi kom Skaikru,_ she said instead.

 _I was born in space,_ he replied.

That hadn’t been what she meant, so she snapped: _give me six laps,_ and he groaned and got up. 

She had not bargained for his failure, but she has always been ready for it.

She reaches forward, fingers searching until they find the knot of the blindfold. Her fingers brush through his hair. She pulls the blindfold free. “Mofi,” she says again, and he blinks several times. She waits until his eyes adjust to the darkness, and then until he meets hers. “You failed your mission,” she repeats. “I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”

“Then you’re on the cold hill again,” he says, softly. “Taking the telescope apart.” It’s not an affirmative answer. She waits. Her fingers are tight around her dagger: she will stab him through his eye socket, back into his brain. She’s not sure if it’s painless, but nobody has ever complained to her before. “I’m going to fucking kill A.L.I.E,” he says, suddenly fierce, and —

She —

She sets down her dagger. She sits down beside him, wraps an arm around his shoulders. He is still warm. 

When Jasper emerges to release him, blinking owlishly, she snarls “You are _absolutely useless,_ ” and eases Mofi’s sleeping head off her shoulder. 

—

Jasper is upset when he returns: he calls, anxiously, for Raven, who returns with Bellamy. He is drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness, vaguely apprehensive about them but mostly uncaring. But not really in a numb way. In a good way. 

They had let him make his way down the stairs by himself, without his hands or eyes to guide him: the unknowing descent into darkness, and below, and below, and below. That keeps replaying in his mind, again and again, but he doesn’t really have any feelings about it. It’s kind of annoying, is all. 

Bellamy is saying something. Bellamy is saying “Should we blindfold him again?” and Jasper is making some kind of concerned noise.

“We’re in a cave,” snaps Murphy. “The secret’s fucking _out._ ”

He wishes he knew more than that. He wishes he had any useful information, but he has never been this far out of the woods before, and the Rover took too many twists to untangle from Jasper’s constant jostling and the noise in his ears and around him. 

Bellamy makes a scowling sound, kind of, and then pulls him to his feet. Jasper touches the wall, and the room lights up around him. Forward and to the left, there’s a kind of half door that leads to an officey space, which is full of Raven typing away and — the backpack. _The backpack._ The power source — He should — 

“Murphy,” Bellamy is saying. “Eyes on me. _Murphy,_ ” a warning. He snaps his gaze back to Bellamy, trying to at least look like he’s listening. Bellamy reaches around him and uncuffs his hands: he lets them drop, stares at Bellamy. 

He takes a breath. He shakes out his arms, lets his nerve endings wake up. Keeps staring at Bellamy. 

“Why did A.L.I.E need to go to Polis?” asks Bellamy, his eyes narrowed.

 _< Find out where this is going._>

He shrugs. “Reasons,” he says.

Bellamy sighs. He takes Murphy’s wrists again, hesitating on the one that feels weird, but he cuffs them back together all the same, this time in front of him. Miller has replaced Jasper in the room. Miller is holding a shocklash. Miller is stepping forward.

He doesn’t _like_ where this is going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a Dutch door in between Raven's office and Murphy's cell
> 
> also, she's listening to headphones, Ryfe. they're called headphones
> 
> look at these children knowing things about circulation i'm so proud
> 
> ryfe, probably: my feet are cold i should put some socks on  
> also ryfe: who cares death comes for us all 
> 
> the lap circuit that murphy uses @ polis is around the polis barracks which is about 1.5 miles. ryfe was like "run ten miles for me" and he was like "ok i guess". look. he is so fit. he runs a 5:35 mile which is pretty good considering he grew up in lockup in space
> 
> anyhow. your comments and kudos mean the world to me. thank you for reading! <3 <3 <3


	9. let me see your scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for some “if you don’t love yourself first you can’t love anyone else” rhetoric
> 
> i am not brave / the heart’s secret  
> i am too brave / the heart’s secret
> 
> wow sorry this took so long i think this is literally the longest i have ever spent writing a chapter. also i work two jobs now which is. a thing. thanks for waiting!

Jasper bursts through the door. “Are you going to torture him?” he says, voice out-of-breath and shaky. “ _Don’t —_ “

“Oh my God,” says Bellamy, already having decided on a course of action, already having followed it through to its natural conclusion in his head. Something _had_ to be done, and so he is doing it now, himself, because nobody else will be willing to.

Jasper is aware of himself in full; how useless he is, how useless he has always been, skinny and weak and underfed; ineffective without a gun. He steps between them. “You’ll have to get through me first,” he says, and he has no allegiance to Murphy, but he remembers being afraid and helpless, remembers Harper, Fox, _Monty —_ he remembers being under someone’s thumb, with no recourse besides his own self.

And — Maya.

He thinks about Maya, and that pain is all-encompassing but _so familiar,_ and he hauls back and punches Bellamy in the face. 

—

Raven takes off her headphones, saves, stands up, stretches. There’s something going on in the adjacent room. She closes out of her program and leans hard on the table. Her good leg is asleep. Her bad leg is mostly pain. 

There’s yelling. She stumbles as best she can to lean over the half-door. Miller has a shocklash. Bellamy is bleeding. Jasper is also bleeding. Murphy is backed up against the wall, watching them without fear. “What are you doing,” she asks, but flattens it at the end, already knowing.

Miller turns, flips the shocklash over in his hands. “What does it look like?” he asks, matching her tone.

“Lemme see that,” she says, and Miller crosses to hand it to her. She examines it. “He doesn’t have pain receptors,” she says. “I wouldn’t even bother.”

“Worked on you,” Miller points out.

She sighs. She doesn’t really want to explain this basic concept over and over again. “It’s different,” she says. “A.L.I.E’s learned. So don’t.” She’s still holding onto it, and she tosses it gently onto her desk chair. She is going to shut the door, but someone is saying her name.

Someone is saying her name.

“01010010 01100001 01110110 01100101 01101110.” She recognizes it immediately. She always does. 

But Murphy doesn’t know binary code. Murphy hands her chewed up electronics with the wires sawed off and asks if she can fix them. Murphy is more likely to smash technology than be able to repair it. It’s. It’s not really Murphy.

“Fuck off,” she mutters, hardly audible.

“01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101,” he says, a touch of desperation. 

“You shot Harper,” she says, an accusation. Static, all across her vision. Is she talking to A.L.I.E, or is she talking to Murphy? Is there really, at this point, any sort of distinction between them? “If you want me to give you _anything,_ you have to give me something first.”

Murphy has come around Bellamy now, is shoving Miller aside. Miller lets him. 

His wrist is broken. He doesn’t seem to care. “What do you want,” he asks, and there’s blood dripping out of his nose.

Static. She wants to walk down the streets of the City of Light, feel the rain on her skin, wants to see the streetlamps and the cars and the reminder of a city built over two hundred years ago — 

“17VoZSFit~6_oHj{KYJ6YRihuSEk58,” says Murphy. “7msDjpDC8QJ?Y-9aJ6z3V:)]ik0Z^KpN<a.H3r9skvN&%9@Tm>BaG9x4Srz?q?2.”

Those aren’t _words —_ that’s part of an encryption key. She pulls back out of the half-door, comes around to her desk, and pulls up the code again. Starts typing. 

Everything is opening up; the city’s secrets are becoming clear to her. 

She hardly notices the dull sound of Murphy collapsing on the other side of the door. Someone else can take care of him.

She’s getting closer.

—

This morning, Moss had grasped her shoulder and said: “ _Aperis tu manum tuam ad te prius._ ” To hold, you must first open your hand. Then he had given her a smile and gone off into the woods. There was talk of finding an electromagnetic pulse and getting a battery, to pull Mofi out of the City of Light, but she doesn’t know the details and doesn’t care to. She did not make herself for this. She learned how to operate a gun, a Skaikru weapon, to teach Mofi, but she is an old dog. There are too many new tricks.

She is sitting on the bed in the room Luna has assigned to her, almost dozing but not quite, when Bellamy comes to lean in the doorway. He is made of half-promises and cracking glass. “Hey,” he says.

She doesn’t respond.

He keeps leaning in the doorway. He asks: “How many people have you killed?”

“Fifty-one,” she says. She could recite this answer with her eyes closed, in the dark; it is always close to her. It lives on her skin.

“You keep count,” he says, not a question.

She opens her eyes, takes in the full measure of him. “How can you _not?_ ” she asks. It is not a matter of honor, it is not a matter of pride, it is — “I am not so _callous_ or so _careless_ as to have yet lost track.”

He swallows. “Would you tell me?”

“How many people have you killed?” She asks in turn.

Darts his eyes away from her face, tells the wall behind her: “Six hundred and seventy-seven.”

Ryfe hears herself make a noise, an aborted laugh, maybe. “And they call Clarke _wanheda._ ”

Bellamy kind of shrugs, and she — Well. She has done this before. 

“Blood must have blood,” she tells him. “Come here. Let me see your scars.”

She was not in Polis that day, but Mofi has recounted it to her: _You can lash him thirty times. And then send him to Oshokru: he can learn that Grounders are people._ His debt is paid. She doesn’t have to agree with it.

He goes to her, a tentative trust sparking. She makes room for him on the bed. He sits on the edge, and after a beat, takes off his shirt. 

His scars have healed nicely: all that remains of the evidence are thin, pale lines of damaged tissue, skin that won’t darken underneath the sun. 

Ryfe takes a deep breath. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” she tells him. “Do you regret what you did?”

“Yes,” he says, instantly.

She sighs and reframes her question: “Do you regret what you had to do?”

There’s no answer to that one. She continues.

“I was fourteen winters old when I took my first debt. It was the warmest summer I had ever had: I was always running around barefoot with the Nightbloods. It’s this one, look: my sun tattoo.” On her ankle: ochre against skin. Bellamy stares: he’s surely seen the same thing on Mofi hundreds of times. “I had one month,” she says. “I completed it within a week.” They were an easy target. She had completed it with no more than her slingshot and then, just the first four fingers of her left hand.

“Someone offered me a gun and passage to the ground if I shot the Chancellor,” says Bellamy, unprompted. “I had to protect my sister. My responsibility.” Like he’s still trying to convince himself of it.

“May I touch you?” she asks, and he nods his consent, and still flinches away from her hand on his shoulder. “Listen,” she says. “ _Listen._ You are not blameless, but you carry too much blame. You were not built to carry this kind of pain. Octavia can take care of herself. Clarke can take care of herself. You need to learn to do the same. You have to learn to live with what you’ve done.”

“Okay,” says Bellamy. 

She drops her hand. “If you hurt Mofi, I will slit your throat.”

Bellamy laughs quietly, like he doesn’t think she’s serious, or has accepted this reality already and finds it funny. “Okay.”

She lets it go. She lets Bellamy sit there for too long, shirtless, head bowed, until she touches his shoulder again and says: “To hold, you must first open your hand.” He opens both of his hands, palm-up, and she grasps him by the wrists and pulls him to his feet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 01010010 01100001 01110110 01100101 01101110 - Raven  
> 01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 - please  
> Aperis tu manum tuam ad te prius - to hold you must first open your hand (direct translation is You open your hand, to find yourself first, Latin)
> 
> murphy did not get tortured and ryfe is great as always! bellamy got punched in the face!
> 
> the nightbloods that Ryfe knows were not Lexa + Luna; it was the Second Generation of Nightbloods and the Commander that grew out of them. she would have known Lexa but not been close to her. Ryfe is not a Nightblood herself: there are just only so many children allowed in Polis and most of them are Nightbloods. wow that was more confusing than I meant it to be. the point is that ryfe is old. like the same age as dr. griffin. 
> 
> lastly: your comments and kudos make my day, every day. i love them. i love you. thanks for reading. <3 <3


	10. all of the nutrients you'll need with none of the taste

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is kind of rough please make yourself a cup of tea before reading it
> 
> pomegranate/green tea is currently my favorite but pumpkin spice is also very In
> 
> disclaimer: i’ve never been to the ocean

Moss and Prosper return to Luna’s cave late that afternoon, bringing back enough fresh food for all of them: berries, a whole dead panther, herbs and plants for Luna. Wanheda follows them in, and Luna lets her through. She has a gift: a wrapped carving of a cat. He can’t imagine that she actually brought it for _him_ ; in awkward Trigedasleng, she apologizes several times. 

Murphy is kept prisoner in one of the far caverns of the cave. Ryfe tries to explain to him that Murphy isn’t really Murphy now or whatever, but Moss gets it. Murphy is a wily and escapable criminal, and he is a useful tool to the Coalition. But he has decided to stay! They should stop.

Nobody listens to him, though. His voice is small and gets drowned easily, in the noise of other people.

Also, Murphy probably never explained to them that he has decided to stay. He was very grumpy about the whole affair when Moss had last asked. 

Anyhow, Murphy requires a guard with him at all times. They are almost finished putting away the panther when the watch changes and Prosper asks him if he would like the next shift. He would! 

The last time he had seen Murphy was in Polis, a week ago. Maybe two weeks. It seems far away now, but it must have been recently: he had been showing Murphy how to fletch arrows, using hawk feathers to ensure a true aim.  Murphy’s hands had been unsteady, but persistent until Ryfe had called him back to the barracks to train. And then Murphy had left, on another mission, with another debt, and Moss had heard no more of it until Prosper had bundled him along to the dropship, in the loud self-moving cart, and then there was a cave and a quest and now here they are. 

Murphy is sitting against the wall, his knees pulled to his chest, when Moss comes in. He relieves Miller from his post, and Miller looks him up and down with raised eyebrows but leaves. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. Moss knows that others often take the full measure of him in, and find him _lacking._ Lexa says that that is his strength: to look weak when he is strong. He doesn’t feel very strong.

“Heyo, lukotwar,” Moss greets Murphy, and then regrets his use of a title over his name. He searches for some kind of comfort in his pockets. He has not brought anything but the wrapped cat Wanheda had given to him. He pulls it out, unwraps it, and then scooches the cat towards Murphy. “Mraow,” he says as the cat, imitating the yowly plea of his own cat at home, before the Ice King came. 

Murphy glances down at the cat dismissively. “Sha,” he says. “Chit, Moss.” _Yeah, whatever, Moss._

“Yu hon in beda!” he half-yelps without thinking, too excited to restrain himself. _You’re getting better!_ Maybe Ryfe had finally found an effective method, or there had been nothing better for him to do, down here in the darkness. 

“Sha,” says Murphy, and then he does look at Moss, and his eyes glitter with something unpleasant, something not-Murphy. Moss tries to brush it off as superstition, but: sometimes a man will be on a long fishing trip, alone, and he and his boat will wash up to the shore separately, and the man will speak like the ocean; hissing syllables and all soft shhhhh’s, and he will talk about things he was not there for, about things he should not know. “Sha,” Murphy says again, in that cadence that Moss _doesn’t like._ “Fakte mi get in Trigedasleng tutaj tempo, ba ai ne gaf in al chit al la absolutaj plej malbona natblida.” What. “Yu estas oni mokskwoma, Moss, kqj yu estas plej malbona ĉe ĉe batalado.” He wouldn’t — 

When a man washes up on the shore, talking about things he shouldn’t know, things he shouldn’t say, they will set him on a raft made out of sticks and float him out to sea. If he comes back again, they cut him open from throat to gut and leave him for the gulls.

“Yu estas fisako en la okuloj de via frato,” Murphy finishes, and there’s this sick grin on his face, and Moss remembers _cutting the man open, his guts slimy and coagulating, still speaking, impossibly, through ruined mouth, teeth stained,_ remembers Prosper’s hand on his shoulder, his face wet. “Yu noun em okuloj,” he snarls. _You know I’m right._ But he’s not, and it doesn’t matter, because this isn’t Murphy, but it isn’t _not_ Murphy either — his voice, speaking something Moss can understand, has said only to himself: _you’re soft and useless. You’re a failure to your brother._

He wraps the cat up again, seeking anything to do with his hands. He _hurts,_ and Murphy hasn’t even touched him. 

_I have always spoken Trigedasleng, I just never wanted to talk to someone as awful as you before._

Raven is speaking into a box, the next room over. “Look,” she says, her voice tinny and far away. “Can you send someone else over? Murphy made Moss cry, and it’s fucking pathetic.”

—

Bellamy comes to pick up Moss, and then there’s nobody but him and Raven for a while, and he feels tired and kind of bitter, and he lays down, unwrapping himself from his knees. He wanders the City of Light again, but it’s like Emori doesn’t seem real to him anymore, and Mbege, who has been around on the edges, in crowds, like he can’t stay for long, keeps appearing with his throat cut and he won’t respond when Murphy calls out. He tastes blood in the back of his mouth. It’s not satisfying.

_You’ve been living here, in the silence of the night sky_

He doesn’t _want_ that. It isn’t helping anymore. 

He stands up and paces the room for awhile. The door to Raven’s office is closed now, and no matter how much he rattles the doorknob, it doesn’t open.

Bellamy comes in after that. Murphy says: “You were going to torture me.”

Bellamy shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Murphy can’t decide if he sounds insincere. He doesn’t want anything from Bellamy. 

_Not that the image is false, but that the relation is false_

He wants _everything_ from Bellamy. He wants the warmth of Bellamy against his skin, his voice, his —

“You need me to cuff you again, Murphy?” Bellamy is asking. 

“Nah,” says Murphy. “I’m good.” Bellamy’s fingers over his wrist, brief warmth, circled thumb to forefinger, cold metal — It’s not a bad memory, but it’s not a _good_ one either, and A.L.I.E’s not sure what to do with it. He holds on.

“Okay,” says Bellamy. “Stay on that side though, yeah?” He points, to the far wall, away from Raven’s door. He obeys, meandering his way back, sits down cross-legged. Bellamy ducks out again, leaves the door open. Murphy stays where he is.

Bellamy brings in a chair. Wooden, with a back, no arms. A well-made red cushion on top of it. And then: Clarke follows him, and —

She is holding the Flamekeeper’s journal. The heavy, leatherbound notebook: what Titus had promised to him, before, if he ever stopped fucking up. He wants it. He doesn’t move. He _wants_ it. “You gonna be okay?” Bellamy asks Clarke, as she sets her bag across the chair and sits down.

“I can handle myself, yes,” Clarke says, stiff.

Bellamy lets his eyes drift to Murphy. Murphy nods back at him. Bellamy ignores that. “You have the shocklash if you need it,” he tells her. 

“Yes,” she confirms. She opens the book. 

Their whole. Thing. That’s kind of interesting. 

Bellamy leaves again, shuts the door behind him. The book is on her lap. He can’t stop thinking about the book. The journal. Whatever. 

The door opens one last time. Prosper comes in, sets down a plate of food in front of him. Won’t look him in the eye. Leaves. Clarke isn't paying any attention to him either.

Murphy looks down at the food on the plate. Gathered berries, panther meat, something packaged that’s probably from Ark rations or rations from — the bunker? The cave system? Something that was made a long time ago but is probably still good for eating. He starts in on the berries. They taste like nothing. All he registers as he swallows them is that they’re not poisonous. 

 _< Talk to her._>

Can do. “So you got locked up because of a crime you _might_ have committed, right? That’s kind of hardcore, Clarke.”

Clarke won’t really acknowledge him. “Not really,” she allows.

“You think you’re not a real criminal?” he tries.

She doesn’t respond.

“You’re just like us, Clarke, even though you keep trying to escape it all the time. You’re just as low as the rest of us.”

“Eat your food and shut up, Murphy,” she says with no real heat. He goes back to the berries. He doesn’t feel hungry and they’re no more appealing than they were before.

_< Try something different.>_

He starts pulling apart the meat with his fingers so it looks like he’s doing something. “Anyhow,” he says. “You got kept in solitary all the time, right? No yard time or anything. We never saw you. Did you even get work to do?”

“Yeah,” she says, sounding affronted, maybe? “I sorted through fabric.”

“Easy,” he scoffs, and then reigns his scorn in. It’s not useful right now. “You ever act out or anything? You drew stuff on the walls, right? We all got shuffled through different cells that one time, and I saw them. Fucking beautiful.” He’s not even lying.

“Where is this going, Murphy,” Clarke is saying, but she’s paying more attention to him now. 

“Anyhow. You were already in solitary, right, so what did they do to punish you?”

There’s a long pause, and it looks like she’s not going to answer, until — “They fed me Nutraloaf.”

Yeah. Nutraloaf. That’s the memory. Pasty brown bread, made up of the previous day’s meals all in the same bowl, shoved through a blender, and then sliced for optimal convenience. “Exactly,” he’s still saying. “You remember what Nutraloaf is?”

In a half sing-song, Clarke obliges him: “All the nutrients you’ll need with none of the taste!”

He lets her have half of a quiet laugh. “Right,” he says finally. “That’s what everything tastes like to me.”

< _She’s listening to you now. Make her remember what she did to you. >_

Yeah. _Yeah._ “You want to know what actually happened between me and Ontari?” It won’t hurt to tell it, he’s so numb to it now. He can’t feel anything: the sensation of pain isn’t even a memory, it’s just this deadening nothing in the back of his brain.  

And. After he had gotten back, as Clarke pressed an icepack to her rapidly swelling eye, she had said, _you can tell me. You can tell me what happened._

And he had handed her the broken necklace and said, _you can’t fix this,_ because symbolism or whatever, Mbege would have known. And then: _fuck off, Clarke, it’s over, don’t talk to me._ And then there was Ryfe, and she hadn’t approached him again about it. 

But she doesn’t have his best interests at heart here. She just wanted to _know,_ for the sake of knowing. So she could use it against him in the future. So she could _have_ it. 

And he doesn’t care anymore, and he wants to hurt her, and she’s hungry for it, so _yeah._ He’ll give her what she fucking wants.

He shoves away the plate of food. “We were going to take over the world together,” he says. “Me and her. Make everyone who had ever hurt us, make them _pay._ ” Pauses, considers. “And like, it’s not the same as it was before,” ages ago, now, “it’s not the same, imagining them dead. But with her, it was almost good again. It was really nice.” And then, calculated: a slow roll of his shoulders. “And then she went into the tower — into Polis — and she killed six _children_ , the Nightbloods, and she tied me to the bed and she —“ _< Cut yourself off. Breathe, let it out, stay shaky.> _“I don’t know why I expected anything different. I don’t know why I thought she would —“ _< Stop. Slow your breathing down._ _Calm._ >

His throat kind of hurts. _< There is no pain in the City of Light.> _His throat doesn’t hurt. _< Calm. Even. Cool._> He’s got a lot of practice at that. “She used her knife.” _< Steady._> His throat feels kind of. Heavy. “She used her knife and she used me. My body was her tool and I _liked it._ I got off on it.” Whatever whatever whatever. “Her hands on my shoulders, in the Commander’s bed —“ Clarke makes a noise. He stops. He waits.

She won’t say anything.

 _< Keep talking._>

“And I went back to her. I went back to her and I took off my shirt, like this time would be better, like —“ _< Come on, John._> “I thought if I was —“ _< Steady. Keep talking. She’s paying attention to you.> “_I thought that if I was pliant, it wouldn’t hurt. I thought that if I submitted, she would go easy on me.”

_< Laugh.>_

It’s dragged out of him, like a scream. “And I was wrong. Obviously.” Another slow roll of the shoulders. It’s almost easy. “I just.” _< Murphy. _Murphy.> “I never had to participate in my own torture before. I never had to pretend to like it.” The book in Clarke’s lap is slipping now. She’s visibly reacting: her breathing is harsher, her face flushed. He leans forward a fraction —

_< The Flamekeeper’s journal. Let me see it.>_

Easier said than done, A.L.I.E. 

He lunges for it. Clarke _reacts_ — his hand on the spine, leather to fingertips, but she has the shocklash and she gets him in the shoulder, pain arcs across his chest, his collarbone _< THERE IS NO PAIN IN THE CITY OF LIGHT>_ he sprawls backwards, without the book. Hurts. Doesn’t hurt. Just winded.

He lies back and stares at the ceiling. “I would have let her keep doing it,” he tells the ceiling. “But she fastened this heavy iron collar around my neck, and she took me out to the throne room, and I shot Roan for her, and she tugged on the chain.” Hurts. Hurts. Hurts. “And it was never going to be okay. So I turned and I shot her too. That’s all.” 

Clarke tucks the journal away. 

It wasn’t even worth it.

He thinks about it, the leatherbound volume of secrets left to him by Titus. Tastes the blood in his mouth again, as he says: “You should give that book to Raven. And keep it away from me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this just in: cats survived the nuclear apocalypse and moss had one  
> roan killed moss and prosper’s parents AND their cat what a Total Jerk
> 
> some of the Trigedasleng in this chapter is actually Esperanto because i am LAZY 
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos are my favorite things ever, probably. i love them. i love you. thank you.


	11. stay with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are we going to acknowledge that this is torture?"
> 
> "It's not torture - think of it like lancing an infected scab. It hurts but it'll be better in the long run."
> 
> [cheerynoir]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for torture
> 
> thanx 2 cheerynoir for all of her assistance, ever
> 
> disclaimer: not how shocks work, at all

Jasper is pulled into Raven’s office while Murphy is being watched by a dispassionate Octavia. Ryfe is standing in the corner, looking uncomfortable.

“I need you to ask Murphy about his memories,” says Raven, no preamble. 

“Um,” says Jasper, off-balance. “Why?”

Raven sort of gestures to the screen in front of her. “You see this?” Jasper looks; it’s just a string of code, which he doesn’t understand. “This is Murphy. Murphy has ‘forgotten’ all of his bad or painful memories — making him remember them will cause A.L.I.E to rewrite them back into him, which will hopefully distract her from what I’m doing.”

Jasper feels kind of sick. “And what are you doing?”

“I’m getting him out of the City,” Raven says, and her eyes are bright and fearless, and that’s kind of scary. “I’m opening up the Citadel.”

Jasper pauses. “This doesn’t make any sense.” It makes a little bit of sense.

Raven sighs, like, _why am I always surrounded by idiots._ “Think of them, like, a layered thing. The more you talk to A.L.I.E, the more Murphy sinks to the bottom. By making him remember stuff - that pulls more of _him —_ out of the whole thing — that makes A.L.I.E _less._ You get me?”

Kind of. Jasper takes a deep breath. “What if he doesn’t want to talk?”

Raven swallows. Glances to the corner. “Ryfe is going to help,” she says.

Ryfe glowers.

 

—

 

Ryfe is the one who cuffs Murphy’s hands behind his back. He looks to her, and says “ _Don’t,_ ” quiet. She pretends that she doesn’t hear him, or maybe she ignores him altogether.

Jasper has never done this before. He knows it has happened: with Lincoln in the top part of the dropship, trying to save Finn; with Emerson in the Ark’s airlock, in an effort to free him; at least a half-dozen times under Pike’s regime, trying to weasel out dissenters, a coup. Knows it has happened to Murphy before, has seen the aftermath; the blood. The bruises. 

The way Murphy wouldn’t look at anyone, after. The way he flinched.

“Remember that time you tried to kill Bellamy?” he starts with, because what is subtlety. 

Murphy visibly swallows, glances to Ryfe. “No,” he says, reedy.

Ryfe sighs. Ryfe reaches for the shocklash. Murphy scrambles backwards, hits the wall. “Stop,” he says, desperate. “Don’t — Not again —“

Ryfe hesitates.

“I’m working on it,” he promises. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

“You have ten seconds,” says Ryfe, firm, and Murphy takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. 

And he starts talking.

When Raven tells them that they can stop, Murphy curls to his side, hoarse and exhausted, and asks for Bellamy.

 

—

 

It’s almost over. Clarke is caught up in a discussion with Raven about fire. Monty is doing something with a battery. He has a book of poetry tucked under one arm, his water bottle in the other. Murphy asked for him.

Murphy is lying on his side. Bellamy digs his hand underneath Murphy’s shoulder and lifts him into a sitting position. Murphy make a noise that could be a sob. Bellamy uncaps the water bottle, tips it into Murphy’s mouth. He finishes about half the bottle, then turns his head away. Bellamy sets it aside, doesn’t press the issue.

There are going to be burns across his chest, his stomach. Bellamy isn’t sure if he should check them out, or if he should just wait. 

“I wish it had been you,” Murphy says. His voice sounds wrecked again, like it had centuries ago, or maybe just a year, in Arkadia. “I wish you had been the one.”

“I’m sorry,” says Bellamy aloud, ineffective. He moves away, then, unsure of what he can do to help that wouldn’t also be hurt. “You should eat something,” he hazards. “I have a protein bar —“

“No,” says Murphy, almost petulent.

Bellamy stops. “What’s the City of Light like?” he asks, hardly meaning to.

Murphy is silent for a long time. Finally, very quietly: “Everyone I love is dead and it’s sunny out.”

“Oh,” says Bellamy. 

“You really sorry?” Murphy asks. He doesn’t ask _for what._ He doesn’t really need to.

“Yeah,” says Bellamy. He is guilty in every fiber of his being. Sometimes he thinks about walking into the woods and never coming back.

“Don’t let Ryfe back in here,” he says. “And stay with me. Until the very end.”

“Okay,” he says. “I have the poetry book, if you want me to read from it.”

No response. He takes the book out, begins to flip through it.

Murphy turns his head to the side again, spits blood. “Then you’re on the cold hill again, taking the telescope apart,” he says. “Yeah. Read to me.”

Bellamy clears his throat, begins.

 

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.”

 

“That’s just from Macbeth,” Murphy mutters, discontent. “Read me some actual poetry.”

Bellamy pauses. As far as he knows, the whole book is Shakespeare. He flips a couple of pages, and then:

 

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”

 

As soon as he pauses to take a breath, Murphy goes “Actually, can you shut up for a while? I don’t want to hear your voice anymore.”

Bellamy shuts up.

 

—

 

Clarke sticks her head in the room a while later. “Hey,” she says. “We’re almost ready, are you good here?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says. “Uh, he just said he doesn’t want Ryfe to be here, is that gonna be okay?”

Clarke glances to Murphy’s curled form and then back to Bellamy. “Sure,” she says, cautious. “You think you can take him if anything goes wrong?”

“Sure,” he says, not thinking about his hands on Murphy’s shoulders, holding him down as he struggles, for air, for freedom. Feels the guilt curl in his throat anyway, threaten to choke him.

Clarke leaves again, and then returns followed by Monty, holding what looks like a huge box, and Harper, mostly healed, carrying a metal wristband and another shocklash. Clarke has the bound leather journal that she had carried with her from Polis.

“Bellamy,” she says. “Hold him.”

Harper fastens the wristband around one off his cuffed wrists. Bellamy gets behind him, wraps one arm around his chest. Monty turns on the box. Murphy makes a sound, maybe a whimper. 

“It’s gonna take a couple minutes to charge up,” he says. Harper connects the band to the box via a collection of wires. Harper hesistates for a second, and then reaches out and takes Monty’s hand. 

Murphy is repeating something, quietly, rapidly. Bellamy bends his head a little, to hear him. It’s just “ _Kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me_ ,” over and over and over again. Suddenly, Murphy kicks his legs out and slams his whole weight into Bellamy. It’s not really enough to do anything, but it is enough to startle him. He adjusts his grip. Murphy doesn’t try again.

Monty looks to Harper. Harper nods, raises the shocklash, directs it into the band.

Murphy screams. Bellamy’s ears ring from the sound. Then he goes completely limp in Bellamy’s arms, and Raven opens the half-door between the office and the cell. “He’s gonna be passed out for a while,” she says. “Probably the best option is to get him to a bed.”

Bellamy is the one that carries him there.

So it goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has been a long time coming and i am Very Glad to be Done with it. 
> 
> also sorry about all the. heartbreak and stuff
> 
> but murphy is finally free of the city of light! too bad he's super unconscious and his closest ally has betrayed him. gosh, if only emori were here.
> 
> anyhow. do you like this story? please let me know! i can be reached via the comments box. that's pretty much the only way.


	12. memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is Good Content i hope you enjoy it. infinite thanks to the_warm_beige_color for her help blocking this out. 
> 
> EDITED SLIGHTLY BECAUSE I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW LEGS WORK (11/25/2016)

John Murphy wakes up all the way all at once. He sits up suddenly and — yeouch — regrets. 

His tongue is his own again, so he swears loudly, and here he is again, in an unknown place. Underground. In bed. He was asleep? He was unconscious.

Ryfe is there. “Assessment,” she says, a demand.

“Fuck you,” he says, and his voice is hoarse, and he hurts, and he has never been more alive.

“Yeah,” says Ryfe, rough. “I get it. I fucking get it. Give me an assesment.”

She’s not going to leave. The words are spilling out of him, a habit more than anything else, now: “Headache. Two, maybe three cracked ribs. Broken or sprained wrist. Maybe some — nerve damage? — from being cuffed for so long.” He — leaves out the burns, across his chest, his stomach. He doesn’t want to think about them. “Tired as hell but not really sleepy. Really fucking dehydrated.”

Ryfe presses a glass into his uninjured hand. “Hold,” she says. There are a few tense seconds, and then she says “Drink,” and he obeys. Grimaces at the taste: it’s not water. Something like a smile curls onto her face. He feels sick.

“You have burns,” says Ryfe, calm, even.

 _From you,_ he doesn’t say. “I have to go,” says Murphy. It’s kind of coming back to him now: when they were interrogating him, and he was running through the streets of the City, and it was raining but he didn’t have the portable roof anymore, he was just soaked through to his skin, when the drawbridge came down over the moat, and the Citadel, the Citadel — 

It had been what Raven was trying to get into. It had been like a dream; all of it, Emori, Mbege, Finn, his father. There are tears at the corners of his eyes. He brushes them away.

“You need to sleep,” says Ryfe, in that same even tone she gets when she’s trying for gentleness.

“I just woke up,” snaps Murphy. “Don’t tell me I need to sleep. I need to talk to Raven.” Then, considering: “Where am I? Where is _Raven_?”

“North,” is all that Ryfe will say, and then: “I’ll get Raven for you. You shouldn’t be getting out of bed.”

Something in his chest goes warm, _don’t leave me,_ and he swings his legs out from underneath the covers — it is _really_ cold — puts his weight on them all at once. 

Everything suddenly hurts worse.

Ryfe reaches a hand out to steady him. He steps away from her, easy, like they’re sparring in Polis, and his face feels hot. The room is a bed and a chair and there’s a curtain over what might be a door, but when he pushes it aside it’s just empty hallway. Ryfe doesn’t try to stop him, and he stands in the hallway, some kind of cave underground system, for several seconds before ducking back under the curtain, returning to the safety of the bed. Ryfe looks relieved, and he _hates_ her, and he is so glad that she is here, and he gets back underneath the covers.

“Ryfe,” he says, and he thinks he might cry for real this time. “When I wake up, you can’t be here.”

She looks away, and then he closes his eyes, and he goes under again, sleep wrapping him like a blanket, like a cocoon, like some kind of comfort.

 

—

 

Jasper is curled up in bed, listening to Maya’s music player again, when Ryfe appears in his doorway. He takes out the earbuds and watches as she comes in, without waiting or asking for his permission. “How is Murphy?” he asks.

“Not good,” she says. “Better than expected.”

Murphy, helpless in the cave, talking about how they hung him. Ryfe holding the shocklash on his skin, until he screams. Jasper keeps asking questions, thinking _just ten more seconds, just ten more seconds._ You can survive anything for just ten seconds. 

He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and then says: “We fucked up.”

Ryfe looks away. “It was necessary,” she says. 

“Maybe,” he agrees. 

Ryfe sighs and comes around to sit next to him on the bed. “Tell me about Maya,” she says.

His heart contracts. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “She’s dead.”

“It matters to you,” says Ryfe, but he doesn’t respond, and they sit next to each other for a long time, not talking. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

 

—

 

Bellamy stops by his room sometime after: the passage of how time works still seems foreign to him, like hourglass sand slipping through his fingers. He stands in the curtained doorway and says: “I have something to show you.”

“Okay,” says Murphy, sitting up, already exhausted.

Bellamy takes his hand, and leads from the cave to a set of stairs, and they go up to an empty house, and through another door, and he is  —

He is outside and he is alive and he is free. He is his own again. His body is his body is his body. There is sunlight streaming through the trees and there is snow — crusty white stuff, made of ice, less fluffy than expected — up to his mid-calf. The Rover is parked here, covered in snow, and Murphy takes the steps needed to reach it. He covers his hands in his sleeves, and then begins to brush the snow off of the hood. The cold soaks through his shoes, through his arms. 

“Thought you might want to see the sun again,” rumbles Bellamy behind him.

He turns, hops up on the Rover, faces Bellamy. “Yeah,” he says, and the sun is warm on his skin and he is freezing and he wishes he had another layer on, at _least,_ and Bellamy steps closer to him and —

He hasn’t had something that he wanted in so long. He tastes strawberries on the tip of his tongue. “This is good,” he says. “Thanks.” He lets that hang for a minute, and then reaches, takes Bellamy by the lapels of his jacket, pulling him forward. Kisses him slow and gentle, and it hurts. It _hurts,_ and he has spent a long time feeling nothing at all, so he does it again, and Bellamy responds the second time, kisses him back, and it’s like —

It’s like Bellamy is crackling glass, shattered underneath his skin, and he can’t find all the pieces to get them back out again. And it itches, and burns, and it’s the kind of pain he is accustomed to. 

Bellamy breaks away, touches his face, like Emori would. But Emori is long gone. “I have hurt you,” he says, not a question.

“Yeah,” says Murphy, an acknowledgement. “You gonna do it again?”

“Probably,” says Bellamy, hardly an admission.

Murphy shrugs. He doesn’t want to think about it. “At least you’re honest.” And then brings Bellamy’s face to his again, until his lips are numb. “Look, I like this, and what we’re doing here, but also, it is very cold, can we go back to your bedroom or something.” Flattens out at the end, so he doesn’t sound desperate.

“Yeah,” says Bellamy. He wraps one arm around Murphy’s back and pulls Murphy off the Rover, and just holds him for a second.

Murphy squirms because he’s insufferable, and also not a child, and Bellamy sets him down.

 

—

 

They share space like that for a long time; pressed close together, like they would back at the dropship, snuggled together after Murphy had a nightmare. And Murphy falls asleep again, warm enough to feel safe, and Bellamy lies awake and thinks about damage, and how to control it, and the way Murphy’s skin felt underneath his (cold).

About how to atone for that damage. About how to move forward, from here out. About how to _use_ his guilt, instead of letting it fester.

Hours pass. Clarke comes by later, wakes Murphy with a touch before Bellamy can really stop her. 

Murphy wakes all at once, and says, “You gonna cuff me?” sounding disappointed but resigned, addressing Clarke.

“Come on,” says Clarke, ignoring him. “Raven wants to have a meeting.”

“Fuck off,” says Murphy, burrowing under the covers again. Bellamy looks helplessly at Clarke, but she just pulls back the blankets.  “ _Jesus,_ Clarke, I get it, I’m up, I’m up —“

“Good,” says Clarke primly. “Come on.”

In Raven’s office, nearly everyone who came with them to the cave has gathered. Beside him, Murphy makes a noise, like a gasp, maybe, or a word. Sounds like _memory._ He crosses to Luna, and she turns to face him, and --

It was not a kiss between strangers, and when it was over, Murphy closed his eyes and rested his forehead in the hollow of Luna’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.

Luna lets him, for a moment, for two, and then holds him at arm’s length, takes him in full measure. “John,” she says. And then, more forcefully, “ _Lukotwar,_ ” almost a hiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well!!! this happened!!!! look at murphy! being alive! kissin'! experiencing snow for the first time!!! not knowing what an umbrella is!!!! being irreparably scarred from his time in the city of light (mentally and physically)!!!!! i'm so proud!!!!
> 
> next chapter: murphy drinks hot chocolate, talks to luna/emori, continues working on his debt, ryfe spends some more time with jasper
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos mean the world to me. happy thanksgiving!


	13. you could do damage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> none of the stuff i said would happen in the the end notes of last chapter happened in this chapter

“ _Lukotwar,_ ” Emori hisses, and she lets go of him.

He is incoherent. He is not alive. He is still in the City of Light. He is asleep. He _kissed her._ Where’s his gun? He still has his knives, right — no, those were taken from him a long time ago. Bellamy has stepped toward him now, concerned, confused. Good. He touches Bellamy’s waist, searching for his gun, but — he’s not wearing it. “Your gun,” he says aloud. “Where is it?”

“I’m not carrying it,” says Bellamy, and he takes hold of Murphy’s wrists, keeping them in place. “What are you _doing_?”

Murphy yanks at his wrists. Bellamy keeps them there. “This isn’t real,” he says. “Emori’s dead, she was in the City of Light, something went _wrong —“_

 _“_ John,” says Emori, and her voice is _exactly the same,_ “You’re not in the City of Light anymore. But this isn’t over. You have to finish this.”

“What,” he says aloud, but she’s gone, and it’s like he dreamed her —

“What was that?” asks Bellamy, a distant rumble. “How do you know Luna?”

“What the fuck,” says Murphy out loud. “Just — don’t.” 

“Murphy, I’m trying to —“

“Yeah,” says Murphy, distracted. “Let me go, I have to talk to Raven.” Bellamy stares at him, and Murphy tugs his hands out of Bellamy’s grip. Stalks the few paces over to Raven, and she turns, and he raises his hands to ward her off. “Don’t touch me,” he says, rough.

“What?” says Raven.

“The chips,” he says. “They’re still in us. If we touch, they’re going to be reactivated. Static, or whatever.”

“Right,” Raven says, and she nods. “Guess kissing is out of the question, then.”

He frowns. “They can be cut out of us,” he says. “I can show Clarke how to do it on me, and then I can do it to you.”

Raven nods, business. “Okay,” she says. “Then I want you to go back into the City,” holding out a chip, and he feels the blood drain out of his face and takes a step back. “Look,” she says. “I built this chip from the ground up so that there’s no connection to A.L.I.E, just the server.”

“What,” he says, because, _what._ “I can’t kill her if she’s not there,” he says, like he still has any interest in this at all. 

“Look,” she says, and her voice softens. “A.L.I.E’s just a distractions. You have to get into the Citadel. I think that’s where she keeps all her stuff. She doesn’t want you to get in there — I think it contains, like, a kill code. Or, I don’t know. Secrets.”

“Okay,” he says, hesitant. “I need to get this to the Commander,” he says.

“What?” goes Raven, instantly suspicious. “Why?”

“She’s the Flame,” he says, not really understanding himself, but A.L.I.E thought it was important. “She’s like, the next version of A.L.I.E, and A.L.I.E wants to destroy her, and I think we have to go in together. To end this.” Things had seemed — clearer, before, after he had woken up. They’re getting fuzzy again, but the real world is getting sharper. Everything still feels dreamlike. “It’s important,” he says, and knows he sounds dumb.

“Okay,” says Raven, and she’s kind of looking at him with concern.

“Is Bellamy really that bad at sex,” he adds, dropping his voice.

Raven laughs loud enough that several other people look over in concern. As soon as she can take a breath, she says: “Don’t judge him too harshly. It was probably his first time. Didn’t get a lot of practice, I imagine.”

“ _Christ_ ,” says Murphy, and Raven laughs again.

 

—

 

Bryan looks him over before he lets Clarke cut into him. Bryan makes him a sling for his wrist, tells him to quit moving it. It makes him feel anxious, on edge; even here, among friends. In a way, it makes him more helpless than handcuffs — handcuffs mean, _you are dangerous, you could do damage._ The sling means he has been damaged, and is healing; vulnerable.

Jasper is nowhere to be found: Ryfe is gone. Bellamy lurks in the corner of the room, probably trying to look protective. “You have burns,” says Bryan aloud, and the unspoken question: _how._

“Jasper,” he says, and there’s a sharp intake of breath from Bryan. “Shocklash.”

“Why —“ Bryan goes, and Murphy is sort of dully surprised that anyone would ever come to his defense. Then again, it’s Bryan — he’s a sweetheart. He doesn’t finish his sentence, so Murphy pretends it wasn’t a question, that he doesn’t have to clarify. 

“I need to take a horse to the Commander,” Murphy says around him, instead. “When can I leave?”

“Not good weather for horseback, Murphy,” says Bellamy from the corner, low. “Why don’t you take the Rover?”

Because he can’t drive the Rover, obviously.  “Whatever,” he says.

“You can’t drive the Rover,” says Bryan to him, which, thanks. “You can’t use your arm.” Right, the sling. “Take Bellamy with you.”

 

—

 

Ryfe isn’t there to ask him: _why did you choose Clarke for this, you don’t like her and you don’t trust her?_ So he does it for himself. The answer is that he has seen the inner workings of the Flame, he has been A.L.I.E and he knows how to remove her from his blood. And Clarke is the most intimately familiar with the Commander, so she knows where her infinity symbol lives, where she keeps her Flame. So he sips at a mug of hot cocoa at a table and Bellamy sits in silence across from him and Clarke prepares her surgical tools. 

Clarke approaches him from behind, and he tenses all over. “Lean forward,” she says, and he pushes aside the hot cocoa and leans forward, and he reaches his hand out, empty — Bellamy takes hold of it. Murphy glances to him, sideways. Bellamy gives a twitch of a smile. Murphy just stares back, but he’s grateful for the hand-holding.

She starts cutting into him. “ _Christ,_ ” he says, because _ow,_ but fortunately she doesn’t stop. Something wet drips down the back of his shirt.

“That’s gross,” he hears Clarke say, and she wipes something away from his skin.

“What is it, lemme see,” he says, and Clarke hands him the rag, filled with his blood and silver liquid. “Gross,” he agrees, and then pulls over his mug of hot cocoa and vomits into it.

Bellamy lets go of his hand and takes the mug away. He sets his face down on the surface of the table. “Ugh,” he says. He thinks of the unpleasant things he still has to do, and how much he would like to take a nap instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's not technically true, murphy drank some hot cocoa.
> 
> hey look! a mirror to the scene in 3x16!
> 
> sorry for the long wait between updates! i work a lot and it's damaging to my entire being. please let me know what you thought of this chapter because i'm super into Validation. thanks for reading!


	14. you had a demon in you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that sounds like real science

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mercury, murphy. the word you’re looking for is mercury.

He cuts the chip out of Raven and she doesn’t even flinch. The blood wells up to her neck, and then a liquid that looks like molten silver seeps out. He catches it with a cloth, and then shows it to her. To her credit, she doesn’t throw up. “How do you — feel?” he asks. Wants to compare her symptoms to his own self. 

She kind of shrugs. “Headache,” she says. “It feels really spiky, like someone drove something sharp through my brain. You’re sure it’s out?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “You’re still bleeding, but it’s not gross anymore, so, probably?”

“That sounds like real science,” she mutters, and levers herself up to sit on the table, so she can face him. “So you want the Commander to take the chip,” she says. “You just wanna fuck with her, or is there an actual reason? Like, I know you hate being lookout whatever, so do you just want to take her down with you? Because that’s fine, whatever, I don’t _care,_ but I think we could actually destroy the City of Light, Murphy. I think we could do it, if you took the edited chip.”

Her eyes are bright and a little wild. “No,” he says, and he almost regrets saying it. “Like, the Commander has her own chip. She’s also A.L.I.E. The Flamekeeper, what Titus was before he betrayed the Commander, he was responsible for putting the chip into the Commander and taking it out when they died. And they call the chip ‘the Flame’. But you can only have the chip put in you if you have nightblood, right, which is why only kids who have black blood are allowed to be the Commander.”

“I don’t get it,” says Raven, which is fine, he doesn’t really get it either. “How did the Flamekeeper get the chip?”

“The first Commander had it,” he says. “Becca prom heda. I think — I think she was Skaikru. I think she was from the thirteenth station.”

Raven kind of whistles through her teeth. “That’s really cool,” she says. “But why do you want the Commander to take the City of Light chip? That’s not going to help anybody.”

“Except I think it will,” he says, firm. “And I know that because A.L.I.E really, really doesn’t want it to happen.”

 

—

 

Prosper catches him by the elbow right before he goes to bed, mind full of chips, of the City of Light, of plans for the future. He flinches, and Prosper says: “So it’s actually you.”

“Yeah,” he says, rough. He yanks his arm out of Prosper’s grip. “It’s really me.”

“You need to apologize to Moss,” says Prosper, harsh. “I assume you’ll have to use a translator. I won’t do it.”

“I —“ _what._

“You don’t even know, do you?” Prosper says, and his bark of laughter is disbelief. “You fucked up, Mofi kom Skaikru. You fucked up for real this time, and you have to own up to it —“

 _People like you don’t have breaking points. They have flash points._ He backs Prosper into the wall, his good hand on Prosper’s chest. “I didn’t kill Moss and I didn’t kill the other nightbloods,” he hisses. “I never hurt your brother, not if I could help it. Tell me what I need to apologize for and leave out the bullshit.” God, he wishes he had his knives on him. 

Prosper carefully removes Murphy’s hand from his chest, but stays backed up to the wall. “When you had the _kripa_ inside of you,” he says, even. “You spoke to Moss in Trigedasleng, told him he was a failure, that nobody would ever love him, that I didn’t — care about him.” 

Murphy takes a deep breath. He — kind of remembers some of that. “Okay,” he says, slow. “Well, I don’t believe those things, I don’t think they’re true. So I will apologize to Moss. In the morning, though, yeah? Is that gonna make us even?” Takes a step back, gives Prosper room to breathe.

Prosper straightens himself out. “That will make you and Moss even,” he allows. “You and me — that’s something else.”

That’s fine, honestly. Murphy doesn’t give a shit about what Prosper thinks of him anymore.

“Then go,” he says. “I’ll get Bellamy to translate for me in the morning. I won’t ask you for help again.”

Prosper nods once and gets out. Murphy is pretty sure he falls asleep before his head hits the pillow, but in the morning, he doesn’t remember at all. 

 

—

 

Murphy finds Moss while Bellamy packs and assembles whatever his ideal roadtrip team is. He brings Octavia with him for translations. He did look for Lincoln, but hadn’t gotten any luck; Octavia had answered tersely when he had asked, so he dropped it. He’s guessing a break-up, or maybe a fight. Hard to keep your relationship going in an underground cave in the middle of winter. Look how it turned out with Emori.

“Heyo, Moss,” he says, lifting a hand in a half-greeting. Moss looks up. He glances to Octavia, back to Murphy, wary. Something kind of shifts in his chest, painful. “I understand that I said some mean things to you, and I want to apologize, but I don’t speak Trig very well, so Octavia’s gonna translate for me, okay?”

Octavia repeats that back to Moss, and Moss looks again to Murphy, nods slowly.

“I don’t think that you’re a failure, or that your brother doesn’t love you, or that you’re a worm.” He’s just deflecting, he has to replace those things with good things that he does think. Come on, Murphy, you _like_ Moss, this shouldn’t be hard. “I think that you’re great, and that your brother is very proud of you, and I don’t think you’re weak. I think you’re very strong, to leave your home where you had lived for your whole life to come to Polis, even though you didn’t want to. I’m — glad that you’re my friend.” Stops. Looks down at his hands. “That’s all.”

He looks away while Octavia translates. Then: Moss’s cool hand on his face, and he suppresses the flinch, turns it into a concealed shudder. Doesn’t want to — offend. Moss says something back, and Octavia waits a beat, then translates to English. “You had a demon in you,” she says. “So I will forgive you. I am glad you are doing better now. I am glad you are free. We are — still friends.”

“Thank you,” says Murphy, relieved, feeling Moss’s hand on his cheek as he speaks, against his jaw. Touches his fingers to the inside of Moss’s wrist, feels that fluttering of a pulse. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kripa - demon
> 
> octavia and lincoln broke up off-screen. he’s doing fine. he went back to trikru and is living well. 
> 
> oh, moss. you are so heartwarming.
> 
> unfortunately, murphy isn’t quite free yet. in fact, he may never be quite free. 
> 
> thank you for all your kudos and comments! they mean the world to me. i’m sorry updates are so slow — being an adult is hard. no word on when the next chapter is coming out, so that i won’t disappoint you. thanks for reading! <3


	15. shut up, murphy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> niylah! 
> 
> warning for some brief disassociation (losing time)

Bellamy’s ideal roadtrip team is himself, to drive the Rover. Murphy, the lynchpin. Raven, as tech support. Clarke, because she knows where Lexa is hiding. Murphy guesses that Bellamy counts himself as muscle, but he kind of wishes there was somebody else with them: maybe Octavia, or even Lincoln. He can fight now, kind of, but he’s injured and weak. Clarke is no bruiser. He already crippled Raven. 

He takes shotgun because he’s Bellamy’s favorite. Raven climbs into the back so she can cradle her computer monitors or spread them all out over the floor, whichever. It’s a two-day trip, even taking the Rover. Clarke and Bellamy occasionally both leave the car to clear snow or other debris from the path. 

They stop once, at a trading post somewhere between the cave and wherever. Clarke is friends with the owner, and she maybe rents a room on the second floor of the trading post. 

Murphy is exhausted, which doesn’t make sense, because all he’s been doing all day is sitting in the Rover and watching Bellamy and Clarke do work. But he stumbles out of the car and follows them inside, sits down at a table and their host shoves a bowl of something hot at him. There’s a spoon involved. He starts eating it. It’s rice and maybe some kind of sauce. It’s good. The really important thing is that it’s hot.

Bellamy slides in next to him. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” says Murphy. 

“So what’s up with Luna?” asks Bellamy.

Murphy freezes up. “I don’t want to talk about her,” he says into his bowl. 

“Okay,” Bellamy says, easy. “Then what’s up with us?”

The cold feeling in his lungs doesn’t go away. “I like you,” he says. “You like me.”

It was that easy with Emori. Bellamy looks like that isn’t gonna cut it. Clarke steps into his line of vision, addresses both of them: “Hey, are you guys good sharing a bed?”

Bellamy nods. “Murph?” he says. Shortens his name. That’s kind of.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s fine.” It’s a thing. For sure. It maybe does a thing for his heart.

Clarke nods and leaves them.

“So are we together, or what?” Bellamy wants to know.

Murphy would bury his head in his arms if he wasn’t already preoccupied with this bowl. As it is, he shoves more rice into his mouth, chews, swallows. 

 _Are we together, or what?_ He doesn’t know. He’s so tired. He’s exhausted. “Please,” he says, and then stops. He’s not gonna beg Bellamy for anything. “I don’t know,” he changes to. “Look, I have to get through _this_ first, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Bellamy. “I get it.” Good. “After, though, we’ll talk, yeah?”

There is no after. There is only forward, to the Commander, to the City of Light again. He sees no future, no afterwards. No solution. But — maybe? “I just — are you gonna be there?”

“After this is over?” Bellamy says, and he kind of smiles. “Yeah, Murphy. You’ve still got me.”

And that’s some kind of comfort.

 

—

 

At home, back at the dropship, Bellamy always reads before they go to sleep. He leaves the light on and Murphy usually falls asleep before he turns it off. Sometimes, he’ll read aloud to Murphy, if he wants to.

But it looks like he didn’t bring a book with him. So after he takes off his shoes, Bellamy snuffs the candle out, and it’s. It’s cold.

“Look,” says Murphy into the darkness, rough. “I’m gonna go into the City of Light again, and I don’t know how it’s gonna be. If things get — rough, if I start — shooting people again, you gotta take me out. You can’t —“

Bellamy make a noise, and then: “I don’t know if I can —“

“You have to do what is necessary,” says Murphy, firm.

“I —“ Bellamy starts, but Murphy doesn’t let him finish.

“If it helps — I don’t love you. We’re not together.”

“Yeah?” says Bellamy, and he’s sitting up now.

“I hate you,” he says, and his voice trembles. “I’ve never liked you, not since you betrayed me, that’s why I sold you out to the Grounders, why I —“

Bellamy catches hold of his chin. “Shut up, Murphy,” he says.

Murphy stops talking. Bellamy cups a hand to the nape of his neck, pulls him forward. Kisses him.

Bellamy’s lips are chapped, raw. He tastes like heat, and the late afternoon sun, and blood. Bellamy pulls away, doesn’t remove his hand. “Are you —“

“Please,” says Murphy aloud. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” Bellamy says. “Me too. Do you want to —?”

“Yes,” says Murphy, and Bellamy curls Murphy to his chest. Warmth and closeness and Murphy swallows down his tears. 

 

—

 

It’s even colder in the morning. Murphy feels like he has frozen into a solid block of ice. There’s no way he’s going to leave this warm, comfy  bed, ever. Bellamy’s already gone, so he pulls those blankets over him as well, and gets cozier. Curls up. Drifts back into sleep.

Wakes up again when Bellamy pulls the blankets off of him. “I’m going to murder you,” Murphy says, dead serious, sitting up. Cold! Cold cold cold! “Why the fuck would you —“

Bellamy shoves a bowl of something warm into his hands. A spoon follows. Murphy bends to eat it — it’s hot rice stuff again. Maybe some shredded meat. It’s good. “Okay,” he says, swallowing. “I forgive you.”

“Good morning to you too,” says Bellamy, wry. “Put your shoes on, we’re leaving.”

Murphy groans and slides off the bed, still cradling the bowl in the crook of his arm. Pulls his shoes on, doesn’t stop eating. Sets the bowl down so Bellamy can help him pull on his jacket. 

He doesn’t really remember what happens after he sets the bowl down, but then he’s sitting shotgun in the Rover and Bellamy is asking him something. He doesn’t think he fell asleep, though. It’s not a good feeling. “What?” he says.

“Murphy, you’re kind of out of it,” says Bellamy, maybe for the second time. “Do you want to take a nap in the back? It’s still another six hours until we get there.”

“Yeah,” says Murphy, agreeable, because that sounds like a good plan, and Bellamy stops the Rover in the middle of the pathway and he and Clarke switch seats. Raven procures several blankets that were previously bundled around technology and Murphy wraps them around himself instead. Takes up a whole bench in the back.

Wakes up later to the car stopped and someone banging on the side of the Rover. He sits up. “Aw, shit, Bell,” he says, almost giddy. “We’re being robbed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at bellamy and murphy Talking! i'm so proud. 
> 
> The Continuing Saga of People Taking Blankets Off Murphy  
> The Boy Just Wants A Nap  
> Let Him Live
> 
> this just in: john murphy is a Taurus
> 
> (the boy needs a good cry? the boy needs a nap)
> 
> as always, thank you for your kudos, your comments, and your continuing love. they really do make my entire life. thanks for reading! <3


	16. i outrank you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for some Intense Disassociation

“We’re not being robbed,” says Bellamy tightly from the driver’s seat. “We’re being attacked.”

“What?” Murphy says. Everything feels dizzy. He sits up. The dizziness immediately gets worse. The Rover suddenly stops moving. Bellamy swears, pulls the lever-thing to his right, and stops the car. Murphy pulls the blanket off of him, reaches underneath the seat for a water bottle. Takes a long drink. “What?” he asks again. The banging hasn’t stopped. The whole Rover is shaking.

Raven is hunched over a screen. Murphy wonders where she’s plugging it in. “The drones think we’re gonna lead them to Lexa,” she explains. “ALIE’s got people outside, trying to get to us. If even one of us gets chipped again, they’ll know where Lexa is, and —“

“So we get rid of them,” Murphy says.

Bellamy turns around in his seat. “Raven,” he says. “Switch with me. Drive. And unplug all your shit from the Rover, it’s fucking up the battery. Clarke, open your window, use your gun. Murphy, you’re with me. We have the shock batons; those are gonna work, right?” 

“Yeah,” says Murphy, unsure where he’s going with this.

“Good. Head up the rear with me.”

Murphy watches Clarke load her gun, and says, as though through a fog: “Look, if you’re not shooting to kill, there’s no point.”

Clarke glances back at him, wary. Raven is unplugging everything from the powerstrip running through the back, but she’s side-eyeing this conversation. “They’re just people, Murphy.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But they can’t feel pain. They’re not gonna stop moving if you don’t kill them instantly. Sever the connection to the brain, yeah?”

“We can’t —“ Clarke starts.

“We can,” says Murphy firmly, and he doesn’t even look to Bellamy for confirmation. “We are.”

“ _I_ won’t —“

Murphy tastes something like fire in the back of his throat, something burning and dangerous and familiar. “You’re not in charge here, Clarke,” he snaps. “I outrank you. You’re not the Commander, you’re just her _consort_. The Commander ordered me to do this, and I’m going to see it through to the end. So you either shoot to kill or get out of the car.”

Clarke swallows. Raven slides into the seat next to her. “I’m with Murphy,” she says in a low voice to Clarke. 

“Fine,” says Clarke. Her voice is an octave higher than normal. “Fine! Whatever.”

Bellamy is handing Murphy a shock baton. He still kind of feels like he’s out of his body, like he’s watching himself do things, but maybe it’s always been this way? It doesn’t matter. He has other stuff to worry about. He doesn’t really — remember any of it, except he knows he’s on his back at some point and Bellamy shoots someone in the head for him, and there’s the blood splatter and Bellamy’s shaking hands and his throat hurts.

“Thanks,” he hears himself say.

“No problem,” says Bellamy. They close the back doors of the Rover.

Raven keeps driving.

 

—

 

Lexa’s holed up in the back of a collapsed neighborhood, and after they get through the gate, it’s easy to track her down. It’s a safe house of some sort, a hidey-hole for the Commander to come to if Polis has ever been compromised. ALIE’s zombies try to climb the gate, but it’ll take them awhile, and he’ll either be dead or they’ll be out of the City of Light by the time they’re done, so it’s not really a problem that Murphy is worried about. 

Clarke knocks, but there’s no answer, so they end up breaking the door down, and Clarke’s face is kind of pinched, but the Commander is just on her knees, praying or meditating. She wakes up, maybe, when Clarke enters the room, her hand going for the sword at her back. Clarke raises her hands, palm up, not a threat. “Not ALIE,” she says, and Lexa nods and stands, embracing Clarke. Raven is already coming through, setting up screens across the ruined floor. 

“Lukotwar,” she says. “I assume you are here because you were successful?”

“Not yet,” says Murphy. “I want you to take the City of Light chip.”

Lexa visibly recoils. 

“Hear me out,” says Murphy. “The last thing ALIE wants is for you to take the chip, so that’s what we’re going to do. And I’ll be going in with you.” Glances to Bellamy. “Can you cuff her?”

Bellamy looks uncomfortable. The Commander is going to protest.

“Look,” he says. “If things go south, Bellamy can take me out easy. But you — we’re gonna need more help.” 

Lexa gives a sharp nod, and Clarke bursts out with — “You’re just going to go through with this?”

“The Flame is —“ Lexa says, but cuts herself off. Takes a deep breath, tilts her head, maybe listening to something. It’s. Kind of creepy.  Cuts her eyes to Murphy instead of explaining herself to Clarke. “You’ll go in first,” she tells him.

“Sure,” he agrees, easy. “We’re gonna meet up by the town hall, alright?”

The Commander gives a nod, and Murphy fumbles the chip that Raven gives him, almost drops it, and then swallows it dry.

 

—

 

He opens his eyes to gray and skyscrapers. His arm is still in a sling. There is still an array of bruises across his torso. Everything still — hurts. 

It’s not what he was promised. It’s hardly what he expected.  There are people walking past him, and they keep doubling back and just _looking_ at him, like he’s different. He is different. At least he finally feels present in his own body. He ignores them and starts walking.

The City is still built the same. He resists the urge to go look for Emori; she’s not real, here, and she’s not even dead after all, just going by a different name and living in a cave system or some shit, so it wouldn’t help him. He takes the second left, takes a shortcut through the park, aiming for the stone steps in front of the town hall.

And it’s in the park where things start to go kind of — wrong. It’s not just that people are starting to _look_ at him weird now, it’s that they’re starting to look at him and then whisper among themselves. He starts walking faster. They start walking faster around him. They’re closing in now, so — he breaks into a run, and _Christ,_ it’s like he’s running in reality, too, all exhaustion and heavy breathing and strained lungs. And they’ve got no such limitations. 

He makes it to the stone steps. He starts up them, and he trips, and he goes down, and they’re upon him: _outsider. intruder. wrong wrong wrong_

There’s a yell from above him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> callout post: murphy has never driven a car
> 
> also, season four!!!! it happened. i'm very excited. 
> 
> as always, your comments and kudos meant the world to me. thanks for reading!! <3


	17. gotta keep my job somehow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check out that
> 
> week plus+ update speed
> 
> also lexa is great in this chapter i love her thanx good night
> 
> this chapter was updated after it was initially posted! the scene is different after the line "“Didn’t,” he counters." than it was when it was originally posted. sorry!

Lexa does something complicated with two swords. It’s like her whole body is her two swords, and she lunges with them. When she’s done, she holds out a hand to Murphy, and he takes it. Leans on her.

She is dressed the way she was when he first met her, when she tortured him for information on Skaikru’s army, a century ago. War paint over her eyes, battle-dress already soaked in blood. She is corded muscle and deadly and he does not make the mistake of underestimating her though she stands a head shorter than him. She takes him by the shoulder and pushes him an arm’s length away. “You good?” she asks, careful.

He was kicked in the stomach, in the back, several times before she got to him. He moves his tongue around his mouth, wary, and spits out a measure of blood. “Yeah,” he says.

She lets go of him. “We need to get to the Citadel,” she says. “Do you know the way?”

Hesitates. Shocks across his torso, like a map. “Yes,” he says, sure of it.

“You sure?” she asks, finding him apparently lacking.

“I can run,” he snaps, feeling the way his tongue moves across teeth that might be broken. “Doesn’t your chip, like, do _something?_ ”

She shakes her head. “There’s some protection,” she admits. “But less and less. We need to hurry.”

So they run.

—

When they get into the innards of the Citadel, someone who looks like ALIE but less — sharp? — is waiting for them. She only has eyes for Lexa. “Commander,” she says. “And?” Slides over to Murphy. “Her quarry?”

“Becca prom heda,” says Lexa, which. He hopes this conversation doesn’t slide into Trigedasleng. “Lukotwar.”

He has his knife on him. He copied over, near as he can tell, from reality. It could work. “You want me to kill her?” he asks, not very subtly.

Lexa raises one imperious hand. He stops what he’s doing. “How do we do it? The City of Light. A.L.I.E takes control of them. We’re here to stop it.”

_We._

“You pull the killswitch,” says Becca, affronted. “But the Commander does that. How did he get here?”

“Fuck you,” spits out Murphy, bitter and exhausted and unreal.

“You do it, Mofi,” says Lexa. He looks to her. She reaches out, and touches his shoulder. “You want to kill Jaha?”

More than anything he has ever wanted before. “Yes,” he says, and tries not to let his desire leak into his voice.

She gives a kind of smile. She nods to the lever across the table. “Pull the kill switch,” she says. “And I’ll make it happen. He’ll be out in the killing field. I can keep him there.”

“The Commander does it, how did he even get in —“ Becca is saying, high-pitched and anxious and terrible —

“Do it,” says Lexa, on top of her, and her voice is stronger, and this is why he went to Arkadia in the first place, because he was told to, because he wanted to be useful, because he had been _commanded —_

Murphy pulls the lever.

—

Opens his eyes to warmth and dust and his mouth dry. Curls in on himself, wanting to protect the soft skin of his belly, and then he hears Raven say it. “The whole City is down. It’s —“ a pause, tapping of buttons. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

Relief sparks into laughter for her, and there’s the sound of handcuffs being unlocked, and Lexa coughs. Silence. Then, the Commander’s tired voice: “Clarke. Finish it.”

Clarke’s small, strong hands at his shoulders. Pushes him onto his back, pulls up his shirt. Swipes over his unfinished tattoo with something cold. “I want,” he says, and she pauses. First time for everything. “I want Bellamy.”

Rolls to his side, pushes himself up onto his hands. Headache makes itself known, pulsing and sick in the base of his skull. Bellamy’s there, hand to his shoulder, concern. Presses a water bottle into his hands. He drinks gratefully, hands it back.

“Murphy,” says Clarke, almost gentle.

“Yeah,” he says. “I got it, gimme a second.”

Raises himself onto his knees, braces himself against Bellamy and takes off his shirt. Bellamy’s warm hand settles across his shoulders, keeping him steady. _And pinned._ It’s fine.

Clarke’s hands are steady. It hardly even hurts.

“Are you ready for the next one?” Lexa asks.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes.”

Bellamy’s hand tights across his chest. “The next one?” he asks, gruff.

“It’s another tattoo, Bellamy, keep up,” says Murphy, lightly. “Gotta keep my job somehow.”

Bellamy’s hand doesn’t loosen, but he doesn’t ask any more questions.

Lexa swaps out with Clarke, takes the needle in her hand. “Where do you want it?” she asks.

“Like it matters what I think,” says Murphy.

Lexa looks like she wants to contest this statement, but she holds her tongue. “Your shirt’s already off,” she says. “Your chest? Here?” Below the hollow of his throat, on the bone hidden beneath. Just where the collar used to rest.

“Sure,” he says, because he doesn’t care. He wants her to stop touching him.

It’s two thick lines spaced slightly apart from each other. They are not perfectly straight. “You have two days,” she says, packing away the tattooing supplies.

He gives her a sharp nod. Bellamy lets him go. He pulls his shirt back on. Fabric feels rough against his skin. Arm hurts. Straps his sling back on. Doesn’t help much. Half-turns. “Can I borrow your gun?” he asks. “Not for long.”

“What for?” Bellamy asks, even as he hands it over, because of course they’re all so curious.

“Finish the job you started,” says Murphy, vicious. “Kill Jaha.”

Clarke makes a sound, glances frantically to Lexa, who remains stone-faced. “Murphy, you can’t —“

He _can_ , and he is going to enjoy it. “I don’t choose who to kill, Clarke. I was ordered to do this. I am an —“ tastes them, spits them out, “ _asset of the Coalition.”_

Clarke hears her own words thrown back at her and her lip trembles. Like she’s going to cry.Murphy revels in it, but not for too long.“Raven,” he says, and she looks up. “Can you drive me? Just to the killing field, outside the Dropship."

—

Raven understands revenge, like Murphy does, the bitter ache of it in her throat, her lungs. She had used him as a tool to complete her avenging, and in turn, she will help him complete his. Equivalent exchange.

He stares at the gun in his lap, one hand turning it over and over again. “You know how you had me tortured back in the caves?” he says, unexpectedly.

Yes. “It got you to the Citadel, though, didn’t it?”

“Sure,” he agrees, not looking at her. “But I spilled my darkest secrets out to Jasper and _you_ and I learned that my mentor was willing to torture me and I didn’t need to _know_ that. Why’d you ask her, instead of Bellamy?”

“Thought you had a thing with Bellamy,” says Raven, neutral.

Murphy is silent for several moments. “Already know Blake could take me out if he needed to,” he says. “Know he would, if he had to. Just wanted someone on my side that I could trust to stay on my side.”

“You thought Ryfe would be that person?”

He scowls, glances out the window. “I’m just saying. You shouldn’t have fucking tortured me. That was a bad call.”

“Needed to be done,” Raven says, even-keeled.

“Didn’t,” he counters.

“Yeah?” she snaps. “Well it worked, didn’t it. You found the Citadel. You took down the City of Light.”

“I didn’t have to get tortured to do that,” he snaps. “All you have to say is like ‘yeah, that was kind of bad’ or show like, an inkling of remorse, Raven.”

“Yeah?” she says, and feels the heat rise in her cheeks. “But I’m not remorseful. The end justified the means. We defeated a greater evil, and you were in pain for twenty minutes. You’re fine now, it’s not like it’s a big deal.”

A short pause, an intake of breath, and then Murphy screams “Fuck you!” loud enough that Raven jerks the Rover a meter to the right.

“Fuck you,” snaps Raven back, and pulls aside. “If you want to walk the rest of the way, you can. I don’t have to drive you anywhere.”

She expects him to take a deep breath, to apologize, for escalating what isn’t really a big thing. She did what she had to do in the moment. It was for the greater good.

Instead, the Rover reverberates from the force of Murphy slamming the door.

—

He finds Jaha in the field an acre out from the dropship, where Lexa tortured him. Across the bridge. The killing field. Jaha is trying to gather dead bodies, tending to the wounded. It doesn’t change anything. “John,” he says, as Murphy approaches. “I’m glad to see you made it out. I could use some help with the dead.”

Sure you could. He takes the steps forward, and he says: “I want you to know this. This isn’t for my father. This isn’t for Lexa. This has always been between us. This is for me.”

Jaha’s brow crinkles, confused. “What —?” he starts.

Murphy pulls his gun out and shoots Jaha point-blank in the head. It feels good.

He leaves Jaha’s body in the field with the other corpses.

There is no blood on his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, your comments and kudos mean the absolute world to me. thanks for reading!!!
> 
> coming up next: moss!!, Back 2 Polis, more Rover, Finally Emori


	18. only in blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nqf: not passing the bechdel test since 2016

After Jaha goes down, it’s like the cold seeps back into his bones. Starts walking. Keeps walking.

Less snow here, but more ice. Falls a couple times, only has one hand to stop himself.

He doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t really remember what direction he started walking in. It sets in. Gonna freeze. Gonna trip on the ice and crack his head open. Gonna starve. Already injured. Easy prey for coyotes. For vagrants.

The Rover is idling at the end of the road. He’s so tired. It’s a mirage.

It’s a mirage till he walks into it. He opens the passenger-side door with his good hand. Raven is still in the driver’s seat. It’s warm in here, but Raven still leans forward and cranks the heat up when he gets in.

“Sorry,” says Raven, unprompted.

“You gonna drive me back?”

“To Polis,” she clarifies. “Rest of the group has moved on.”

“Okay,” he says. “Good.”

He leans back in his seat, kinda falls asleep for a while.

 

—

 

Luna comes to Ryfe when Skaikru is packing for the journey ahead of them, back to Polis. “You are Mofi’s seingeda?” she asks. “His mentor?”

“Yes,” Ryfe confirms.

“You brought him into this,” she accuses.

“No,” says Ryfe, careful. “He was arrested in the woods outside Polis.”

“I know that,” says Luna.

“He was gifted to Lexa,” she explains. “She chose what to do with him.”

“He’s not an object,” snaps — Luna would never snap like this; she is cool like the moon she is named for. So the legend goes.

“You’re not really Luna,” Ryfe accuses.

Her face falters for a second, but when she meets Ryfe’s eyes again she is fire and gold. “Who are you to tell me who I am and am not?”

“You’re Emori,” says Ryfe. Mofi has — spoken of her. “Luna’s — sister?”

“Yes,” says Emori. Enough to be a snarl. “Only in blood.”

“It’s enough,” says Ryfe. Enough to take her identity. Enough to live in her house. “You are — Mofi’s friend?”

“His lover,” corrects Emori.

“Oh.”

“You tortured him,” continues Emori. “Don’t think I didn’t hear.”

She does not regret it. She will not. “You did nothing to stop it,” she accuses.

An easy shrug. “I have no loyalty to Skaikru or Polis. I don’t care what happens to their lukotwar.”

“But you do if it’s Mofi.”

“He trusted you,” counters Emori. “As his seingeda. You are in the wrong. You owe him blood.”

“No,” Ryfe says. “He is my second, I can do what I like.”

“He’s not going to collect that blood,” points out Emori.

“He has no right to.”

“But _I_ have the right. You have harmed those that I love. Blood must have blood.”

Ryfe shakes her head. “The new ruling is this: Blood must not have blood.”

Emori laughs. “You think I am Luna and then you tell me that blood must not have blood? Like you think it will matter to me? I reject that, as the Commander rejected me.”

And she lunges.

 

—

 

Wakes up eventually. They’re still driving. Raven’s expression is all closed. Like nobody’s home.

How do you make somebody stop looking like that? You talk to them about something they’re interested in. Worked with his mom, for a while. Worked on Mbege, better.

“You ever find out why A.L.I.E made the City of Light?” Raven startles a little, glances over at him. “Why she was so into saving everybody? Like, downloading them?”

Raven kind of shrugs. “There are nuclear stations all over the Earth,” she says. “According to A.L.I.E’s calculations, they would start breaking down within the year. Radiation all over again. More than what we could survive. But I’ve searched and searched and — That isn’t going to happen. Maybe in tiny pockets, near the stations, but nothing actually serious. Her calculations were wrong.”

“She blew up the whole world, you know that?” goes Murphy. “The thing that made us go into space for the first time. She caused it. Her core command is to _make life better_ for humans, so she blew them up. I can see where she’s coming from, but also — that wasn’t her decision to make. She wasn’t human.”

“Yeah,” says Raven, and looks out onto the road. “You got pulled out of the City, right? Like me. We just pulled the plug, but like — the City of Light is still in us. We didn’t lose that information. Everyone else, I think, just got it wiped out of their brains, but we kept it.” Pauses, looks over at Murphy. “Have you — Can you do stuff now that you couldn’t do before? Because, like, I’m really good at coding now, and I definitely wasn’t before. I’m a hacker now, and before I was just an engineer.”

“I don’t know,” Murphy admits. “I don’t know what I did that I couldn’t do before.” He honestly doesn’t really remember a lot of what happened while he was in the City.

“You spoke in tongues,” says Raven, almost reverent. “In binary and in Trigedasleng.”

“Never been good at languages, 01010010 01100001 01110110 01100101 01101110,” he admits, then reexamines himself. “That’s not —“

“Holy shit,” breathes Raven.

“Christ,” he agrees.

“Can you say something in Trigedasleng?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Hang on.” It’s like a dream he had a year ago, something that used to be vivid and bright, but has now faded. “Uhhhh… Ai laik Mofi kom Skaikru. I am Murphy of the Skaikru. The Sky People.”

“That’s not very impressive,” points out Raven. “Pretty sure you could say that much before.”

“Can’t you speak Trig?”

Raven thinks about that. “Definitely not.”

“A.L.I.E couldn’t speak it, I bet. Like. You know that Trig developed out of English to be a code against the Mountain Men?”

“Yeah,” agrees Raven.

“I only got it because at least one Grounder was in the City of Light. So I guess I — absorbed that information. Because it was useful to me. And then — now I can’t anymore. I guess.”

Raven shrugs. “Huh,” she says. “Okay. You wanna learn how to drive?”

“…Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seingeda - mentor, teacher (kin)  
> that binary string - Raven
> 
> wow, sorry for the long update wait! thanks for waiting! as always, thank you for all of your comments and kudos. they make my day, every time! you can also talk to me on tumblr, @icetastrophe. thanks for reading!
> 
> <3 <3


	19. i don't mind when it's you

Back in Polis, there’s no Bellamy to hold his shoulders, so he stays still while Ryfe finishes his tattoo: a third line in the middle of the other two. They mimic kill marks found on anyone else.

Ryfe has a bad scrape across her forehead, and one eye is swollen shut. Murphy is viciously pleased about it. She doesn’t volunteer any information about it, and he doesn’t ask. After completing the tattoo, Ryfe leaves. Lexa hops down from the table she’s perched on top of, inspects his tattoo, and only then is he allowed to pull his shirt back on.

“There will be a celebration,” she tells him. “A feast. You are required to attend, at my side.”

“Yeah?” he asks. “You’re not afraid I’ll stab you?”

Lexa gives him part of a smile. It’s a little sad. “You won’t,” she says.

He won’t. Not really. Not after— Not after the City of Light.

“Dress nicely,” she says. “I’ll have clothes sent up to your room. And — Belomi is waiting for you, in the mess hall. He wants to speak with you, I believe.”

“You talked to him?”

Lexa inclines her head, almost a nod. “We spoke,” she says. And then: “Go. Don’t make him wait any longer.”

—

He goes to the mess hall, finds Bellamy along with Raven and Bryan, talking quietly. “Hey,” he says. To Bryan: “When did you get back?”

“Took the second Rover,” says Bryan. “Came back with Prosper and Indra. You finish your job?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Feast tonight,” he adds. “Are you staying, or going back to — I guess there’s nothing left of the dropship. For real, this time.”

“Yeah,” says Raven. “Lexa promised to help us rebuild. With Polis’s resources, we can still — have a home.”

“Good,” says Murphy, and he means it, although he knows Lexa’s kindness depends on his good behavior. He feels like he can’t quite look at Bellamy, but he takes Bellamy’s gun from his waistband and hands it over anyway.

“Thanks,” he says, and then. “They assigned me to sleep in your room.”

“Yeah?” Murphy says. “Who?”

“Ryfe,” offers up Bellamy. “Or Lexa. I don’t really know.”

“Well,” he says. “That’s fine, I guess.”

“I don’t know where it is,” admits Bellamy. “Never visited you in Polis before.” Like it’s a personal failing of his.

“I’ll show you,” Murphy tells him. “It’s no problem.”

—

He has a room on the top floor of the tower. The other people on this floor are the Commander, a couple advisors, and most of the Commander’s handmaidens/bodyguards. People that the Commander might need access to quickly and easily. He’s got a big window with late afternoon sunlight streaming in, a table and chair for the rare occasions when he’ll have food sent up, an old wooden dresser where he keeps like, two changes of clothes, and a nightstand that is cluttered with all the little gifts people (but mostly Moss) give him.

It’s a bed made for two people, but he usually luxuriates in sleeping in it by himself. “You don’t mind sharing, right?” he asks.

“Nah,” says Bellamy, and Murphy wonders if he’s thinking about the night spent at the trading post. If he’s hoping it’ll happen again. But he’s staring at something. The ankle cuff still attached to his bedpost.

“Oh,” says Murphy, like. _Oh, that old thing._ He sits on the bed and begins to unlace his boots. “When they asked me to kill Ontari, I said no at first,” he explains. “I — they convinced me pretty quicky that that wasn’t really an option.” He’s got a box of crackers underneath his bed now, just in case something like that happens again. “And that’s also kind of the reason Clarke and I don’t talk anymore,” he adds. Bellamy just stares at him. It suddenly feels very intimate, very awkward to have Bellamy here in this room with him. “You can put your backpack over there,” he says, pointing to the table and chair, pulling off his other boot.

Bellamy puts his backpack to the side of the table. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“What?” says Murphy, because. _What._

“After … You killed Jaha,” he says, hesitant.

He finished the job that Bellamy started. He’s — worried? Concerned? That’s — That’s kind of nice, actually. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he says. It’s almost true. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” says Bellamy, and they share a smile between them. Bellamy takes a step to him, touches his hand.

There’s a knock on the door. Bellamy drops his hand.

It’s one of Lexa’s bodyguards/handmaidens with a bundle of folded clothes. So Lexa doesn’t think that he has clothes nice enough? Good. He doesn’t. He takes the bundle. Soft shirt. Those weird pants that stick to his legs. He’s spent enough time around Bellamy that he doesn’t bother stepping away to change. Bellamy still looks away when he undresses.

He strikes a pose. “How do I look?” he asks.

“What did you do with the necklace I gave you?” asks Bellamy.

Murphy sighs, and drops his hands. Okay. Okay. “Remember when you came to Citikru with Prosper and I was there?”

“Yeah,” says Bellamy, just looking at him.

“Two nights before that, Ontari — Ontari the false Commander — Ontari collared me, and then I killed her. And then I got on a horse and went to Citikru, and they had to cut the collar off with this big pair of boltcutters. They cut the necklace through, but I wore it up till then. I gave it to Clarke to fix, but when she gave it back to me, it felt — too much like posession.”

Bellamy lets out a breath. It’s loud. Murphy looks away.

“I’m not,” he says, a half-explanation. “Blaming you. I just thought it would look nice with the outfit.”

“Oh,” says Murphy. “It’s in here.”

He pulls open the top drawer of his nightstand and takes out the necklace along with his thermos. Sets his thermos on top of the nightstand, hands the necklace to Bellamy.

Bellamy kind of holds on to it and stares at him.

Murphy bows his head, and Bellamy rises and drops it over his head. He touches the shell at the end of it. “Are you sure?” he asks. Unsure.

Murphy presses his hand over Bellamy’s over the shell over his heart. “I don’t mind when it’s you,” he says, and surprises himself with the honesty of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you go home, or you make a home, raven
> 
> as always, i love and appreciate your comments, and kudos. i eat them every day for breakfast. please feed me. i am very hungry.
> 
> lastly, thanks for reading!


	20. i can release you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter a person gets Described which is probably like the first time a human being has been described in this story since bellamy said "he had gotten taller over the summer" in ch2 of ppb
> 
> please celebrate this day with me

Murphy joins the Commander in the hall. Bellamy has already gone on ahead with the rest of Skaikru, but the Commander hooks an arm around his shoulders, so he steps into place. The Commander’s two handmaidens/bodyguards and Ryfe and a nightblood make up the rest of their party. Where is Clarke?

Lexa’s hand is warm on the back of his neck. Clarke cutting the skin on the back of his neck. Silver blood. Black blood. Thinks about cutting the Command out of her, the Flame, the computer chip. It can’t be doing much now, can it? What it was built to defeat is gone. Would she even be the Commander anymore? Would she have any power at all?

Her grip tightens as she guides him into the middle of the room. As she makes whatever little speech she does, on the raised dais. His tattoos are already done, his gun is returned. He feels. His palms are too warm. His face is flushed. He wants, maybe, some of Monty’s moonshine, to clear whatever is going on in his head. If he had the courage, he could —

He sits next to the Commander at the long table. Clarke is with the rest of Skaikru. Ryfe stays far away. He’s glad of it.

If he had the courage, he could dig the chip out. He’d only need one knife, and a handful of seconds. But she’d have to stay still for it, and her hair —

Lexa touches his hand. “She is your _seingeda,_ ” she says. “You will do as she says.”

What? He follows her gaze. Ryfe. Of course. “She tortured me,” he says. Doesn’t tack on: _you did too._ Knows when to stop himself. Mostly.

“You were… not yourself,” says Lexa, careful. She must have gotten some sort of story. Whatever.

“Blood must have blood, Commander,” he tells her, bitter, but there’s a mirthless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“You are her second,” says Lexa, still so careful. “You will do as she says.” And then, a tiny smile matching his own, although hers at least crinkles the corners of her eyes: “Besides, she has already been punished.”

“What?”

A pointed nod. “You saw her face?”

“Yeah.”

“Blood has already been taken.”

“You did that?” Murphy asks, pleased despite himself. “For me?”

“Yes.”

And he forgives her. Just a bit. Blood must have blood, after all, and she’s — repaid a little of that debt.

He doesn’t say that. He says: “Give me another sweet roll,” and she really does smile then, and passes him another roll.

—

He tries to slip out as soon as there’s less eyes on him, but Lexa’s hand is at his wrist before he even leaves the table. “Where are you going?” she asks, all gentle.

“Out,” he says. Doesn’t tug his hand away. Looks her in the eye.

She drops his wrist. “Then go,” she says. “You’ll be back soon.”

He nods, and she turns her attention away from him, so he gets out of there.

Goes wandering. Out of Polis, past the marketplace. Till he gets to the tunnel that separates the woods from the city. Climbs on top of it, lets his feet dangle into the blackness. Looks out at the sunset, at the darkening sky.

He lets himself miss the City of Light. Its winding streets, its grid network, Emori with her two perfect hands and Mbege smiling with perfect speech — He should have known it wasn’t real. That he couldn’t — that it wasn’t real. Mbege is dead. Emori is — Her hands are already both perfect. And she’s alive. And she’s real. And she knows — where he is. Whether she’ll — want him, now. That’s something else entirely.

Fireflies are just starting to come out. Teeny pinpricks of light, flashing into the twilight.

“Heyo, lukotwar,” says a voice behind him. He doesn’t get up. Doesn’t look. “Time to go back home now.” Doesn’t recognize the voice, either.

“Sit with me,” he says.

There’s a sigh behind him. “Not for long,” she says. She sits down beside him, a couple inches away. One of Lexa’s bodyguards/handmaidens. The taller one.

He has no desire to go back to Polis. He points the sky out to her, even though she can see it: it’s all around them. “You know what stardust smells like? It’s like hot metal, but sweet. Kind of pleasant. It’s mostly carbon.”

“Carbon?” she says.

He doesn’t answer the question. “My —“ Impossible to describe Mbege as his best friend. Sacreligious. “My brother. He’s just carbon now.”

“He’s dead,” she says, not a question.

“Yes,” says Murphy.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice has a touch of warmth. He shies away from it. “My brothers are dead too.” Not pity. Empathy. That’s alright, then.

Miserably, he lets out: “I want to go home.”

“Then come on.”

“No,” he says, sharp. “Not there. I want to go back. To my brother.” To space? To the dropship? Everything has been destroyed.

“You can make Polis your home,” she says. Gentle? Reassuring?

Right. “Do you see what Polis did to me?” Bitter again.

“Polis breaks everyone, lukotwar.”

He looks at her then, really looks at her. She is dark-skinned. Real tall, probably taller than Bellamy. Her eyes meet his. “Do you think we can do what we do without being broken?” she asks. “And healed up, all wrong?”

It’s. Not what he expected, not from her. “How do you do it, then.”

“Mostly you die inside and change what’s important to you. Find one thing, a single thing, that you want to do well. Do it. Every day when you wake up, do that one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That working out okay for you?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Deep breath. Darkening sky. Fireflies. The prospect of sleep. His sling comes off tomorrow. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go home.”

She offers him a hand up. They walk back in silence.

Before he gets on the elevator. “My name is Murphy. Not lukotwar.”

“Alright,” she says. “Mofi.”

He won’t expect the same from her. “Yeah,” he says.

After another beat. “Mine is Ruth,” she says. “Kom Polis.”

 

—

 

There is noise at the end of his bed that night; he wakes with one fist curled around his knife. Bellamy sleeps on.

“Some lukotwar you are,” she says. She holds a flashlight in one hand, but it’s not on.

“Emori?” he asks, sits up.

“Let’s get you out of here,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says, and that’s — relief. To leave, to be allowed to leave, with Emori. “In the morning. Gotta ask Lexa first.”

“Are you chained?” Emori asks, soft, desperate. “I can release you.”

“No,” he says. “She gets me now, we’re cool.” Knows that his sudden loyalty is suspicious, can’t really explain himself for it. Just has that conversation from dinner, and a feeling in his gut.

“The Commander isn’t someone you should trust,” says Emori, careful.

“I said we’re cool, Emori,” he says, trying not to be too forceful.

Emori sighs, and he wants to touch her, but — There is so much _space_ between them, so he keeps his hands to himself. “I will wait for you for one day,” she says. “At the market in Wildekru.”

“Wildekru?” he asks.

“The land outside Polis,” she explains. “The little town.”

Where Moss had taken him, once, for hot cocoa, in the rain. With the gardens and penned-up goats. “That’s not a real kru,” he says.

“It likes to think it is,” she says, and he can hear her smile more than he can see it.

“Alright,” he promises. “I’ll be there.”

“If your Commander lets you,” she says, and her tone is all mockery.

“She will,” says Murphy, sure of himself. But she’s already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couple more things to happen here and then we will rocket onto Interludes and The Next Story
> 
> wow!!! thanks for reading!!! all of you are great. please leave me a comment. even if you are reading this story years and years after it was published! they show up in my inbox and i check it regularly and they make me smile. thank you. 
> 
> thanks for reading!


	21. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s so good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever / and you’ll never want for comfort, and you’ll never be alone / see the sunset turning red / let all be quiet in your head
> 
>  
> 
> talk about breakneck update speeds

He wakes up before Bellamy does and packs his backpack. Clothes. Thermos. One of the tiny glass animals that Moss brings for him. Stuffs it under the bed. Goes down to meet with the healer.

She unwraps the sling from his body, asks him to do a range of movements with his wrist. It looks good. She cautions him to be careful with it, and releases him.

Bryan catches up to him when he goes down to the mess hall for breakfast. “Hey,” he says. “Got this for you. Recovered it from Arkadia, before we came here.”

It’s his gun. The weight of it is so familiar in his hands. It’s the gun he shot Roan and Ontari with. “Thanks,” he says, and tucks it into his waistband.

Bryan touches his shoulder. “You doing okay, Murphy?” he asks, tender, somehow.

“Got my sling off,” says Murphy, easy. “Made a full recovery.”

Bryan’s brow kind of crinkles, and Murphy knows that’s not what he means, but he leaves it alone. Murphy finishes his rice. He goes to see the Commander.

—

The Commander is in her chambers. Murphy has to give up his gun to Ruth to be allowed in, but he is allowed in. Lexa is bent over some open book, but she looks up as he comes in.

“I want to leave,” he tells her.

“What?” says Lexa, because. That’s kind of one of the basic tenants of being a lukotwar, that he only leaves on her terms.

He sighs real hard. “Just. For a little while. I deserve a vacation.”

Lexa allows him a nod. “Do you know where you’re going?” she asks.

He kind of shrugs. Away from here. “I have a —“ Swallows. “Friend to go with.”

Lexa’s mouth twitches. “Ah,” she says, like he’s given an explanation. “You can have your vacation, skaiskat. You will return at the end of spring, willingly, or there will be trouble.”

Relief. Washed over him, like being overwhelmed, except it’s good. Like a pressure has been taken away. “Roger that, Commander,” he says, and his voice is a little uneven.

Lexa raises her eyebrows. “What?” she asks.

He fights back rolling his eyes. “Yes, Commander,” he says instead, and in a fit of misplaced gratitude, “Thank you, Commander.”

“As always, lukotwar,” she returns. “You’re dismissed.”

Summer is a long time from now. Time enough.

—

Bellamy is gone when he retrieves his stored backpack, and he’s almost glad. It’s a conversation he won’t have to have. Something he won’t have to face.

Puts his gun in the backpack, too, underneath the clothes. Doesn’t talk to anybody else before he goes to Wildekru’s market.

Emori is underneath the canopy of one of the larger stalls. “You came,” she says, and she is — She is all sunshine-smile and the promise of an open road.

“I told you I would,” he says, trying to be clever but he just feels giddy, and he leans in and he kisses her before he can think about it, and she’s —

She’s all the home that Polis will never be. She’s what he gets up for, every day. She is his one good thing.

And she laughs at him, and she’s relieved too. “You wanna get out of here?” she asks.

She is perfect. She is flawed. She has some secret history that he might never get to know. He loves her. “Yeah,” he says, and he takes her hand in his.

She presses a chaste kiss to his forehead, and leads him out into the forest. To the open road. To freedom.

He doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UNFORTUNATELY HE IS NEVER QUITE FREE
> 
> wow hey pals! thank you for reading my dumb fanfiction! hey look, i made a gifset about it! [gifset](http://icetastrophe.tumblr.com/post/159313325303/you-go-home-or-you-make-a-home-x)
> 
> please leave me a comment, or talk to me on tumblr @icetastrophe. i love them. i love you. good night.
> 
> [and of course, be on the lukot (lookout) for The Sequel and the Interludes coming up!]


End file.
